Cool Maritime

Sean Hellfritsch operates as both an electronic musician and filmmaker, shaping expansive, welcoming sonic environments under the name Cool Maritime. His approach draws from Japanese environmental ambient figures such as Hiroshi Yoshimura and from game scores like those of MYST. Material has appeared steadily since 2012, moving between the wide-ranging drones of Some Sort of Wave Portal in 2016 and the crisp, high-resolution melodies of Big Earth Energy in 2022.

Raised on the fringes of Santa Cruz, Hellfritsch later moved with his family to a canyon beside California’s redwood forests, settings that have continued to shape both his music and visuals. With directors Daren Rabinovitch and Isaiah Saxon he launched the Los Angeles film and animation studio Encyclopedia Pictura, through which he has directed videos for Björk, Panda Bear, and Grizzly Bear and contributed to an unreleased game project for Kanye West. He has also created visuals for releases by his wife, Buchla enthusiast Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.

Cool Maritime’s first album, Tea Time Travel, appeared as a self-released project in 2012; the cassette edition added synthesizer experiments omitted from the digital version. Leaving Records issued Some Sort of Wave Portal in 2016, an album built chiefly from extended real-time synth pieces. Sharing Waves followed in 2018 with selections commissioned for an outdoor plaza in Los Angeles and was released alongside the remix companion Shared Waves. The 2020 collaboration Big Lunch with poet Rob Moss Wilson came out on Smith’s Touchtheplants label. Western Vinyl released Big Earth Energy in 2022, an album recorded on late-’80s equipment and informed by mid-’90s role-playing games.