Drone Machines Beginnings
Tristan Shone, a mechanical engineer, musician, artist and founder of Drone Machines started his musical project Author & Punisher in 2004 while attending art school following a few years bouncing around as a mechanical engineer within the semiconductor industry in Boston, MA. In the metal shop at University of California, San Diego, he forged a relationship with design, sound and fabrication now unharnessed from the cubicle and clean rooms that were so suffocating, leading to an MFA.
This 3 year period yielded his first 3 albums and mapped the journey away from traditional instrumentation, towards custom made, precision machinery called Drone Machines. The physical movements alone control all aspects of the sound with limbs struggling in unison to coordinate a wall of rhythm and oscillation emanating from machinery but organic and loose, void of sequencing and plastic perfection.
He has now released 8 albums, the newest “Kruller” is out on Relapse Records. This album was composed and written on a new set of Drone Machines which are greatly influenced by a now 16 year parallel life as a mechanical engineer at the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) at the University of California, San Diego.
TEAM
When the time came to start Drone Machines, Tristan joined forces with longtime friends Adam Reed-Erickson (senior product design engineer), Jason Begin (sound designer and composer, who co-produced the last A&P album as well as collaborated on other A&P tracks and albums), and Hanri Thayyil (software engineer who was brought in at the beginning of the newest collaboration with Arca).