One of the most intriguing figures in industrial and drone music today, Author & Punisher is a strange beast. Tristan Shone, the project’s sole director and contributor, has been making harsh, unsettling and hypnotically beautiful compositions using an ever-growing arsenal of home-built ‘machines’ for over a decade and as he launches Melk En Honing, his fifth album and first for Phil Anselmo’s Housecore Records label, he took some time to chat about engineering, hecklers and the toils of the trade.
The title of the new album is Dutch for ‘Milk and Honey’, which is quite specific. Where did that come from?
A lot of it has to do with several trips I took to the Netherlands to visit friends there in the techno and art worlds. In 2007 I went on a three-week tour, completely on the train with all my cases strapped to each other and then some of it on my back. So I was taking the train around the country to all these little clubs and festivals and up and down stairs – it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I really feel like it established what Author & Punisher meant for me in terms of workload and physicality. I always remembered that trip and the purity of the hard work was what milk and honey meant to me.
It’s the first album that you’ve written using the masks that you built last year. Did you tailor the new material you were writing to the added sounds that the masks opened up for you?
Being honest, the masks do not play a big component on the album compared to what they play in a live show. There is one device that is attached to my throat, a trachea mike, and that is used all the time. It allows me to control bass tones, ambient noise, all kinds of stuff, and that is strapped to my throat at all times. Only now, I have these throat polyps and pain going on because of it. The masks are used on two songs on the album. One of them, the mute mask, is more rhythmic. Then there’s the drone mask and the other, the dither mask, is more ‘screamy’. They’re noisier-making machines that I can use for the drone-out stuff that I do live. On the album, with Phil, we decided that we were going to do less of a noise album and do more structured songs.
That structuring plays such a huge part on this album – it’s a very layered record. Will this pose any problems when it comes to performing the material from it live?
Other than the vocal harmonies, which were done on a separate track, everything was played live. I’ve been touring with it already, but there’s maybe one song on the album, where the harmonies are so prevalent, that I’ve been trying to figure out how to do. I may just bring another person along to sing them, or get a vocal harmoniser effect. I’ll work something out.
Have you recorded any of your other albums live?
No, this is the first time I’ve ever recorded in a studio, doing takes and trying each part. Usually, I do it with MIDI – record to a click track, then go through it and fix it. It’s still played live and I’ll keep things, tweak them, but this time I didn’t even touch the mixer the whole time. I played, they recorded.
Did the writing of these songs take longer to come together?
Yeah – I didn’t even plan on doing this album. Last summer, I was planning on building whole new machines, but I didn’t have the money. It was going to cost me 15 grand to build new instruments and I really didn’t want to go into debt. I had a small window to go and work with Phil on a new album so I spent the whole summer writing. I didn’t really tour from May through October; I basically just sat in my studio with all the old machines I’d worked with and I added on the newer machines and the masks. There were two songs that were written entirely in the studio as we threw out a couple of the more mask-based noise tracks that I had, but they will probably be released later this year on a separate 10” or something.
It’s a very strong album, melodically, which has been becoming steadily more apparent over the past few albums. Have you become more open in terms of influences or had you always intended to develop in this way?
A lot of people haven’t heard the first two albums that I did – I think Drone Machines was the first one that really got out there – but The Painted Army and the Warcry EP are much more guitar-based, with sequenced drums and keyboards. They were very much like this album. I think, if anything, the lack of vocals and melodic structure was more of an experiment with the machines. Now that I’m learning to play the machines better I don’t have to make so much drone and experimental noise.
What was it that you found so restrictive about the use of traditional instruments?
We used to use bass and guitar, but now I have two synths – basically just MIDI controller keyboards on a custom rack so that I can play both together – but I mostly do piano. The guitar just doesn’t work with this current setup because I can’t just do it with one hand, so that’s not gonna happen. I think it’s also just a bit of stubbornness on my part not to include the guitar. I don’t have anything against it, but I just want to move on.
How did you get involved with Phil and Housecore, and how are you enjoying your time on the label thus far?
He spends his whole entire day getting sent stuff from friends or on the internet looking at music and listening to all sorts of weird stuff. He has a stage manager who saw me at a show in Manchester and checked it out for Phil, and told me Phil would get in touch about maybe touring with The Illegals, and it just went from there. We clicked on tour – he’s very social and doesn’t like to separate himself, just wants to drink beer and hang out – and he said “Let’s do an album.” That was it, and they’ve been great. They had me come over to their house for three weeks to record, eat breakfast, dinner; it’s just like hanging out at your friend’s house.
“I have to say I think I have much more of an artist’s mindset. With engineers, things need to be made perfectly. It’s incredibly anal and it detracts from the creativity. You’re so obsessed with rules and that drove me crazy.”
How did the crowds receive you on that tour? You can be an odd proposition for the unprepared.
None of them had heard of me so I wouldn’t say it was great, especially when I was the opener. When I was direct support, I maybe had a few more people in the room. There were some hecklers, but you can kind of tell from merch sales how things are going. Even now, when I play to crowds that are there specifically to see me, if I play new material everyone just stands there staring at me the whole time. At the end there’s a good response, but I think a lot of the time, people are just trying to figure out what’s going on.
The artwork for the album came from Russell McEwan (ex-Black Sun), who I know has been a big fan of yours for a long time. How did that collaboration end up happening?
We got in touch online a long time ago, as he’s a fan of a lot of similar music that I am into. I saw a lot of the artwork that he’s posting over the past few years and he was originally going to do a t-shirt for me, but I was having some trouble doing the artwork for the new album. I had tried a number of different options and they just didn’t have the feel that I wanted so I wrote to Russell, we talked about a few things and it worked out. I hope that if we make it over there next year we can do a live crossover with one of his projects.
You originally come from an engineering background, but then moved on to art and sculpture. Given that you come from both worlds, do you find any distinctions between the artistic mindset and an engineering mindset?
Absolutely. I have to say I think I have much more of an artist’s mindset. With engineers, things need to be made perfectly. It’s incredibly anal and it detracts from the creativity. You’re so obsessed with rules and that drove me crazy. I left engineering back in 2004 because I couldn’t deal with what it was doing to me as a person – the repetition, the fact that you had to be so on-point and could never stray away or do something irrational. That’s what I love about art and what I love about the application of it that I’ve been able to apply my skills to. There has to be something a little crazy or a little strange about art and they just don’t have that in engineering.
You’re currently back doing engineering work alongside your work in Author & Punisher. What made you decide to head back in this direction rather than working solely on the music?
I work for a research lab at the University of California, San Diego, working in a lab that looks at cancer – we have a bunch of electron microscopes and I do some engineering on the microscopes. I worked in industry after engineering school, back in 2000, but academia is a nice, happy medium. After getting out of art school, I had the chance to work on the sculpture that became my art practice and my music, but I couldn’t tour to the extent that I do now. I needed a job and I didn’t want to teach art, and that’s what most people end up doing; I couldn’t sell my art, so the engineering skills come in handy.
How do you find the balance of touring and working?
It’s difficult and I’m lucky that I work at the university because they give the freedom to work down to about 50% at my job and still keep the benefits of my job. I’m able to tour about 4 months out of the year. Most engineering jobs wouldn’t allow you to do that, so in some ways I’m stuck here because of the flexibility. I have a good relationship with the people I work with, they follow me and they like the music.
Your live shows are very immersive, very physical. Is that something that takes its toll, physically?
When I tour in Europe, it’s basically Author & Punisher lite. I have the stuff that I can take affordably on the aeroplane, but that’s not my preferred setup. It is a lot easier except that I have a long way to go over there to get the fanbase to be the same as it is in the US, but the US is very difficult for touring. I used to do it myself, but now if I’m doing longer tours, I have to bring people with me because it’s too hard on my body. With this tour, in September, I’ll maybe have 2-3 people – video, lights, sound guy and someone to just carry stuff and drive.
Has having a visual component always been a plan for the live shows?
The video was something that I didn’t plan on. I always thought my gear and the performance was enough of a visual experience for people but, at the same time, I’ve had this gear for a while and I’m only one person on stage. I think having video adds to the mood. We have a guy who takes my entire setup, plugs all of the outputs into his own video setup, and everything is reactive to the pitch and the intensity. It’s not like we’re pressing play on a movie; he’s also performing live at the same time, which I think is important.
Given the bulk of some of your machines, are you finding now that transportability is more of a concern when you are designing new ones?
Absolutely. The first things that I made were very heavy and after a few trips I found that I definitely couldn’t go to Europe and I couldn’t get them up the stairs easily, so I designed the machines and the case to be under 75lb. It was interesting for me because I don’t like working in plastic, but if you set yourself some constraints, you can get pretty creative.
Your machines are almost entirely metal. Your background is in metalwork, but is there an aesthetic component to your choice of materials?
I think it’s more the feel. The aesthetics are obviously industrial – I don’t paint them, I just leave them as metal. There are certain things, like when I’m designing something that moves I have to give it a chain to hold the wires, that give it an aesthetic, but I really try not to overdo that, like in a steampunk way. As for plastic… if you tap a screw into plastic, it eventually comes loose. If you tap it into aluminium and anodise it, it stays nice and tight. I like metal.
You’ve done some performances in the past in non-traditional venues in the past, such as art galleries. How do shows like that compare with a more traditional, ‘metal’ crowd?
I don’t really do anything different with my performance. It’s maybe slightly more droney, but I don’t like the idea that rock music can’t work in the gallery. It works really well, and in many ways I prefer playing places like art schools or galleries because the sound isn’t as good. I think people expect that and sometimes playing through small, shitty speakers can sound so much more brutal than playing through a big, clean system, and the all-white walls can make the projections really cool. You can set up a few different projectors. I sometimes find those shows to be so much more aggressive. People are moshing, girls are taking their shirts off – it’s just way more punk rock.