Bio

photo by Raoul Ollman

photo by Raoul Ollman

Originally trained as a filmmaker and visual artist, San Francisco based producer and composer Marc Kate applies cinematic and conceptual approaches to music and audio production.

As a response to the tech culture assault on San Francisco (and the world), Kate takes up the tools of the trade — computers and synthesis — and slyly counter-attacks, imbuing humanity precisely where humanity is being evacuated. He creates a counterpoint to tech’s speed and greed — slow, immersive, materialist, drifting.

But Kate also draws from his history in San Francisco’s synth-punk and techno scenes, emerging to create stripped-down, static experiments in synthesis.

Marc Kate is half of the synth doom duo My Heart, an Inverted Flame with Andee Connors, half of the experimental ambient project Driftloss with Colin Marston, and leads the electronic post-punk band Never Knows. He has also released solo material on over two dozen labels including Jacktone, Loöq, Air Texture and Dragon’s Eye Recordings and his own imprints Untitled & After and Failing Forms.

Performing and composing from San Francisco to Berlin, he has created soundtracks for choreographers Monique Jenkinson and Keith Hennessy (Circo Zero), and contributed to the soundtrack of cult horror film All About Evil. In 2012 he launched the podcast Why We Listen, where he interviews a varied range cultural practitioners about their relationship to music. In 2016 he began the podcast Scary Thoughts: Horror, Philosophy, Culture with writer Chad Lott. He has composed music for the audio tour of the Clyfford Still room at the SFMOMA, performed at the De Young Museum, was featured in Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Bay Area Now 7 and worked on performances with the FOR-SITE Foundation. He has been a resident artist at Land and Sea in Oakland, CA and Tanzhaus in Zürich.