Tristan Shone, aka Author & Punisher

“Yeah, the music is dark. It’s what comes out, but it’s kind of heartfelt. But some people think it sounds like nightmares.” Music from one of Dante’s seven circles of hell: ex-metal guitarist Tristan Shone, from New Hampshire, performs solo on a robotic assortment of repurposed machines that make a range of concentrated and often demonic sounds. “I have this tone in my head, and I keep trying to reinvent it, like maybe the way a guitar would sound playing through a combination of four really trashed amps. Maybe like late-’90s Deadguy, the Melvins, or maybe early Neurosis. I’ve spoken to a producer about doing sound for a movie, but video games...if I could do the sound and the voice for a video-game character, that’d be really cool.

“After the heartbreak of many band breakups, I decided to go back to school and start Author & Punisher. I’m going on my tenth year now.” Shone, 36, recipient of the award for Best Hard Rock Album at SDMA in 2013 came to UCSD from Boston to earn an MFA, and he stayed. “That’s where my money comes from, by the way. I work as a mechanical engineer in a neurosciences lab.

“My music is best performed in a bright room where people can see that you are sweating and working really hard. New York, San Francisco, and London have all been good towns for what I’m doing. Portland, Oregon was probably the best audience. They’re not very progressive here. People like garage rock in San Diego. They like to see the machines. They say, “Hey, it’s that guy on YouTube.” I made some new voice-modulating masks. I’ll be using them for the first time at my show at the Soda Bar. They’re kind of like gas masks. They’re brutal looking, really. Sound comes out a door that opens and closes like a big sphincter.”

Corrections House and Wrekmeister Harmonies also perform.