Name: Tristan Allen
Nationality: American
Occupation: Composer, puppeteer
Current release: Tristan Allen's Tin Iso and the Dawn is out October 20th 2023 via RVNG Intl.

If you enjoyed this Tristan Allen interview and would like to stay up to date with their music, visit Tristan's official homepage. They're also on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud.



What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

I start on piano, improvising till I find something special. Then I try and imagine a setting the musical idea should exist in, this points me towards sounds and instrumentation.

Once the music starts telling a story, I move onto puppetry.

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

I get optimistic once the moving parts no longer seem separate - when the puppets move, act, and dance at home with the music. From here my imagination takes off and I try to tell a story.

I know it’s done when I get the feeling of being outside looking in, like peering in on a world that could exist without me.

I began Tin Iso and the Dawn in 2015. I finished the music and art in 2021 and the puppetry the year after.

I started "Act II: Sea and Sky" in 2015. Took a while for everything to come together.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I hope to make work that provides story and setting where the listener can feel like the protagonist. People see in stories what they’re looking for if given the chance to explore.

The album starts and ends with piano. I want to use piano like a wardrobe portal similar to Narnia, giving the feeling that you crawl through the bottom of it to adventure to a fantasy world and crawl back through to return home.

Tin & Iso is loosely based on Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.

I love electronic music, most of it comes with sci-fi feelings. I want to make fantasy music.

I read a lot of epic fantasy, folklore, and mythology.
I play a lot of Magic the Gathering and go out dancing every chance I get.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

Making music and puppets has become the big constant of my life, something to fall back on to make sense of things. So yeah, kind of like a ritual.

Working on Tin & Iso became very difficult and heavy because I was using it to make sense of hard things that came up. I struggled to sit in the chair to make things happen, largely due to romanticizing the process.

I developed a kind of system to help me focus and combat the trickiness of making something. Every day I track hours spent working with tallies and compete with my previous self’s count month by month. It keeps me from freaking out about not getting enough product done.

It allows me to treat creativity like a muscle I’m training day by day for the imagination olympics.

To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

Discovered it for sure! I think music has a way of raising visibility, to turn up brightness. In the woods late at night you think you’re fine until you turn on the light. Then you see all the creepy crawlies and they want to suck your blood.

To me this is what the practice is all about. I'm trying to focus and brighten my light to discover and make sense of everything in the dark. I hope using shadow puppetry in Tin & Iso drives this point home.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

I wasn’t born into a belief system and don’t believe in anything (maybe guardian angels). I’m in pursuit of something like spirituality, using creativity as ceremony - worldbuilding I put enough into that it becomes real, a place I can go to.

Like music, working on my own puppetry quickly became a means to externalize thoughts, observe and process them. Almost like a ritual, the form helps me. Puppetry gives shape to imagination, seeing ideas move is deeply gratifying. From playing as a kid, everyone has that joy in them, to return to it feels like a natural thing to do.

The capacity of a person projecting life onto something is universal. It’s an essential part of how people regardless of time and place relate to the world around them. Getting an object to breathe is stating something is true that isn’t currently true. Puppeteers tell true lies, developing that craft feels like magic and is well worth the difficulty.

It’s primal, raw, direct and makes people want to believe.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

Yes, I definitely do. With Tin Iso and the Dawn I set out to finish my first album and premiere my first complete show. I wanted to create the beginnings of a world I will develop for a long time to come and to see it grow as I do.

I have plans to complete a trilogy of music with puppets that tells the mythology of an imaginary  world. Tin & Iso (chapter 1) explains how stars, moon, sea, sky, land, growth, death, and the sun came to be. The project I’m working on now will be about the beginnings of mortality and fire.

Once I’m done with the trilogy I’ll move onto building civilizations with culture, language, and politics. I’ll add drums to the music when I get there, excited.

I love when authors and visual artists stick to a place and flush it out over long periods of time. I don’t see it much in music and want to give it my all.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

Production and mixing is a big part of what I do.

A limitation I put on myself is to use only acoustic instruments. I’ve collected a lot of funky things from all over - toy piano, music boxes, harmonium, air organ, flutes and ocarinas, gamelan instruments, basses, field recordings … I want to make music that sounds tangible and organic but not from any recognizable source. To pull it off I spend loads of time in production and mixing tinkering and mushing sounds together.

Mastering I leave for the pros, good to have a second pair of ears that haven’t been stuck to the thing for years.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I get a lot of satisfaction from performing and really love the sound of applause and adventures on the road. Having something finished that I’m proud of gets me on stage! I feel emptiness spending all my time alone in a room fiddling and second guessing.

I haven’t released a full LP of my own music before. October 20th will be the big day, I’m so happy and relieved to have RVNG put it out. I’ve released solo piano EPs and metal band music but never this.

The music and puppets for Tin & Iso have been done for a bit, I’m now in the process of making the next one. Forgot how tricky the first stages are, but it’s gotta be done, simply must!