Disparition

Live at Zebulon
June 24

Jon will be accompanying David J (Bauhaus / Love and Rockets) live on songs and poems from David's upcoming new album "The Mother Tree" and book "Rhapsody, Threnody and Prayer".

• Tickets

Night Vale Live Tour
on sale

Join us for Welcome to Night Vale's newest touring show, "Murder Night in Blood Forest." Longtime fans and newcomers will both be able to enjoy this stand-alone show.

• Tour Dates

Unlicensed Season 3
out now

Published by Audible Originals, "Unlicensed" is a deeply-human and captivating thriller featuring a hauntingly noirish score by Disparition. Season 3 is out now.

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In A Walled City: "The Historian"

"In A Walled City" is an experimental audiofiction series that helps us navigate the coming phases of human existence. Episode 8, The Historian, introduces a new voice inside its walls.

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About

Jon Bernstein is a composer, producer, performer, and sound designer who focuses on creating new forms, sounds, and experiences for today’s media landscape. Jon has been recording and releasing music as Disparition, an experimental electro-acoustic project, since 2004. Notable works include original music (Palm In Mirror, Granicha, 1989, Transmutations) and audiofiction (Unlicensed, In A Walled City, Welcome to Night Vale, Alice Isn't Dead)

Disparition has built up an expansive discography over the last fifteen years, pushing out from a starting point of the atmospheric ambient music of Transmutations (2007) and Neukrk (2011) towards more adventurous and inventive soundscapes including Granicha (2014) and Palm in Mirror (2016). Along the way, Disparition has delivered wildly creative concept albums built around specific historical and literary experiences including 1989 (2008), a dark ambient exploration of the Romanian Revolution and MADOC (2013), a techno-based interpretation of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time trilogy.

Jon tours extensively, currently providing session work and live backing for musician and poet David J (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets) since 2019 and live scoring for the genre-defining fiction podcast Welcome to Night Vale since 2013. Jon is the composer of the theme and soundtrack for Welcome to Night Vale and served as both composer and producer for Alice Isn’t Dead (2016-2019). Jon has toured extensively to provide live scoring at live Night Vale events, performing at venues including Town Hall in New York, the Palladium in London, Benaroya Hall in Seattle, and the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia. Both podcasts have been turned into NY Times best selling novels and audiobooks, featuring new commissioned music.

Other commissioned composition, sound design, and production work includes the Audible show Unlicensed (2023-2025), Alice Isn't Dead (2016-2019), music theatre work Wake (2014), and other experimental theater projects performed at venues throughout downtown NYC and Brooklyn. Jon has performed at both the NY and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals.

In 2018, Jon formed RAQIA, an improvisational hybrid of folk, classical, and ambient music with violinist Greg Allison (Three for Silver, Eliza Rickman) and guitarist Tad Piecka (Petrychor, Beware of Safety). RAQIA released two albums and toured the West Coast in 2018 and 2019.

Jon is also a founder of Society of the Wing and Scale, an experimental new wave/alt pop duo he formed with Deepthi Welaratna (Dark Spring Thunder) in New York City in 2012. Currently operating out of Los Angeles, Wing and Scale's music blends noisy beats and textures with intricate synthwork and lyrics that blend the personal and the political with directness.