Based in Los Angeles, Sean McCann operates as a composer, experimental musician, and audio engineer, creating everything from tranquil ambient textures and abstract chamber music to exuberant string-based works laced with electronic feedback. After carving out a reputation in drone and experimental circles throughout the latter half of the 2000s via a flood of cassettes and CD-Rs such as Phylum Sigh (2009) and Open Resolve (2010), his work after 2012 moved toward modern classical forms and ensemble writing, evidenced by Ten Impressions for Piano & Strings (2015) and Music for Public Ensemble (2016). He has issued material across dozens of labels while maintaining an active engineering career and overseeing the respected Recital imprint.
McCann entered the world in 1988 and began self-releasing cassettes of improvised experimental music in 2007. He rapidly became a central presence in the cassette and CD-R underground, appearing on imprints including Digitalis, Stunned Records, and DNT Records. In 2008 he helped launch Roll Over Rover, which documented his own recordings alongside those of Ugly Husbands and Horse Marriage. His debut vinyl outing arrived as the 2010 LP Chances Are Staying on DNT Records. Additional albums reached vinyl the following year: an Orange Milk Records reissue of Open Resolve, Sincere World on Amethyst Sunset, and The Capital via Aguirre Records. He added strings to multiple tracks on Zola Jesus’s 2011 album Conatus and launched an extensive engineering practice that encompassed numerous Preservation label releases.
McCann founded Recital in 2011 to focus on modern classical and experimental music. Its initial offerings—Prelusion, later reissued on vinyl by Root Strata in 2013, and the 2012 collaboration Vanity Fair with Matthew Sullivan—marked his final electronic drone and ambient statements. Beginning with Music for Private Ensemble in 2013, he turned to acoustic instrumentation such as strings and piano, incorporating musique concrète tape manipulation and vocal experiments. A 2014 LP titled I, created with Root Strata founder Maxwell August Croy, appeared on Students of Decay. Early the next year Recital issued his serene, immersive Ten Impressions for Piano & Strings, while a contrasting 2015 Recital album, A Castle Popping, explored vocal experiments alongside piano and small-ensemble pieces. He completed the long-gestating double LP Music for Public Ensemble, which invited listeners to submit vocal recordings and ultimately included contributions from Ian William Craig, Maxwell August Croy, Graham Lambkin, and others upon its November 2016 release. A second joint effort with Croy, simply titled II, followed in 2017. Puck, a 2019 solo LP weaving late-2000s personal recordings with spoken text and chamber compositions, appeared next.
