Portrait of Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt by Sig Waller.
 
Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt has been making music since he was six-years-old. He started off writing songs, or “texts” and “melodies” as he describes it, before taking an interest in House Music in his teens. Sean began DJing, before moving from Chicago to Berlin, where he started singing and playing guitar with Metal bands. It was in Europe that he began his interest in Electronic Music.

With a desire to balance both his love of Electronic with Metal, Sean produced Drone, Ambient and Noise music, developing his own distinct form of “Accidental Guitar Music.”

“Accidental Guitar” is a holistic and grounded concept that includes three main aspects. The first of these is the creation of sounds and sound worlds by combining the guitar with distortion effects – a type of “routing” or “mapping” technique where the musician does not lose himself, however, but instead works in a deliberate manner with the tools available to him. The second dimension of “Accidental Guitar” is improvisation – an approach that Cooper Marquardt has chosen, systematically rejecting predetermined choreographies and all forms of rehearsal or planning. This applies not only to live performances, but also when making recordings in his studio. Finally, the third dimension to this concept is the specific situation that the musician encounters when playing: the atmosphere and setting, the persons, conditions and moods present in the space in question lead to a contextualisation of his music.

Sean has released over 200 recordings on digital format and CD. He performs across the world, and has recently finished a tour of France. I had hoped to interview Sean for Dangerous Minds, but he preferred to “create a article without using the question and answers normal modus of operation.”

I once interviewed Phil Collins for a documentary I was making on the Carry On team. I had been told (on very good authority) that Mr. Collins was major fan of those saucy, innuendo-laden Carry On films of the 1950s and ‘60s. When it came to filming the interview (in an hotel room near Earls Court in London) and I asked the former-Genesis drummer what it was that he most remembered about these films? Mr. Collins replied that it was the lack of traffic on the city center roads that he best recalled form those classic comedy movies.

For some artists it is perhaps best to allow their work to speak for them. So, without much further ado, here is a selection of Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt‘s Accidental Guitar Music, for your delectation and delight.
 

Bonus: Elizabeth Veldon & Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt Glasgow Airport & Other Hazards.
 

Bonus: Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt and Balkar Wacholz, Berlin 2012.