Jon Bernstein is an award-winning Los Angeles-based composer, producer, and live performer working at the intersection of dark ambient, electro-acoustic, and experimental electronic music. Recording and releasing music as Disparition since 2004, he has built an expansive, genre-fluid catalog of work across music, audio fiction, and film.

His discography moves fluidly across genre while maintaining a singular identity: the gritty, layered textures of Transmutations (2007) and Neukrk (2011); the critically praised conceptual sprawl of Granicha (2014), described by Brainwashed as "a massive, complexly structured, genre-hopping, multi-layered monster"; and Palm in Mirror (2016), which expanded his palette toward prog and kraut rock influences. Earlier concept albums include 1989 (2008), a dark ambient meditation on the Romanian Revolution (awarded a Badge of Honor by the Berlin Music Video awards for the music video for its first single “Wood”), and MADOC (2013), a techno-based interpretation of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time trilogy. His more recent run of singles and independent sound-art anthology podcast In A Walled City (highlighted by Nicholas Quah in Vulture for its "industrial-goth energy") continue this trajectory of music that resists easy categorization.

Since 2014, Bernstein has clocked over 350 live performances at venues around the world from intimate venues (The Bell House, Zebulon, Mercury Lounge) to cultural touchstones (Great American Music Hall, The Town Hall, The London Palladium) to opera houses (Benaroya Hall, Sydney Opera House) and even a stint as shipboard entertainment (JoCo Cruise). He has collaborated with Bauhaus co-founder David J as a live and session performer on works including a a ‘cold wave’ synth version of “My Funny Valentine” recorded for Cleopatra Records’ Gothic Valentines (2025), The Mother Tree (2025), and Tracks From The Attic Revisited (2026) released on Independent Project Records.

His original scores for narrative podcasts, audio fiction, and film have reached millions of listeners worldwide and earned major industry recognition, including a 2023 iHeartRadio Best Fiction Podcast Award for Welcome to Night Vale. His work has been featured in outlets like The Guardian, Electronic Sound, and Time Out Worldwide, with credits including Alice Isn’t Dead, Audible Original Unlicensed, writer and theatre maker Emma Frankland’s None Of Us Is Yet A Robot, and Podium Entertainment’s upcoming This Will Ruin the Tour. His composition 'The Ballad of Fiedler and Mundt,' adopted as the Welcome to Night Vale theme song, was recently featured on Vox Media’s musicology podcast Switched On Pop for its role in shaping the sound of the modern podcast theme song.

Bernstein also produces and plays with other artists. He is the co-founder of Society of the Wing and Scale, an experimental dark wave/alt-pop project with Dark Spring Thunder, and RAQIA, an improvisational ensemble blending folk, classical, and ambient music with Gregory Allison and Tad Piecka. Previous bands include Past the Divide and Henny Hendrix, for whom he also executive produced the 2016 EP Lucid Static.

He has composed original scores and sound design for playwrights LaShea Delany (Condi, My Fall of Falling), Ben Gassman (The Downtown Loop), Ariel Stess (Howls and Sounds, Steven Alone); directors Mei Ann Teo (Middle Flight, The Cherry Orchard, 19, Wake) and Pironne Yousefzadeh (Barking Girl, I <3 Revolution); and filmmakers including Moema Umann (Strawberry) and Bailey Heinonen (You’ll Never See It Coming). He has performed at the New York and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals and accepts commissions for composition, sound design, and live scoring for film, television, trailers, and games.

Before focusing full-time on music in 2014, Bernstein worked in publishing (SF Weekly, Barnes & Noble, Hyperion) and advertising (T3).