In Osni the Flare, the second chapter of Tristan Allen’s mythic trilogy, the composer, producer, and puppeteer follows a mortal’s transformation into deity through the discovery of fire. Recorded over four years using wordless vocals, organs, ocarinas, an arsenal of toy instruments, and intricate sound design, Osni the Flare unfolds the origins of flame and temporality across four sonically and visually compelling acts. Weaving a creation myth that shifts between beauty, shadow, and wistful embers, Allen provides a portal to meticulously crafted, emotionally potent sound and story that echo through a fantastical realm.
Born in Saratoga Springs, New York with early childhood memories from his family’s tenure in Japan, Allen’s path wound through formative encounters including teacher Andy lorio, who encouraged improvisational techniques in the young musician’s burgeoning interest and prowess at the piano, and Amanda Palmer, who discovered them at 16 during a Berklee summer program and crowdfunded their first release. After studying piano at Berklee, cofounding the live-electronics collective Nue, touring China with metal band Dent, and releasing two solo-piano EPs, Allen fled Boston for Brooklyn in 2018. A Craigslist ad led to puppetry training under Mike Leach, who spent six months teaching them to properly walk a marionette leading to a position as a performer at the vaunted Puppetworks theater. This rigorous work, combined with exposure to their father’s Bread and Puppet Theater artifacts and Balinese shadow puppetry, led Allen to their creative practice: composing for acoustic instruments, arranging electronically, and performing through puppetry.
Osni the Flare traces a creation myth following the titular character who awakens in a garden and picks apples from a tree. Beckoned by a Loon, Osni sets forth to safeguard the tree from winter’s chill. When the Loon is devoured by a Dragon, Osni ventures into its belly and discovers embers. In offering these embers to the tree, it catches flame—the origin of fire itself. Iso, god of the sea, intervenes with a flood that drowns Osni’s garden. In death, Osni’s soul enters the shadow realm to join Tin and Iso, becoming the deity of fire—Osni the Flare. The album sounds more human and childlike than its predecessor, Tin Iso and The Dawn, shifting from the overseer perspective of deities to follow the first mortal character in Allen’s world. Underpinned by new love, the project channels feelings into music that becomes an enchantment all its own. Like Tin Iso, the album opens and closes with piano as a portal representing home, as Osni embarks across three realms: the land of the living, the in-between, and the beyond.
Recorded almost entirely with an Aston condenser mic in Allen’s Brooklyn apartment overlooking the Cypress Hills cemetery, Osni the Flare was built from toy piano and flutes, ocarinas, harmonium, pump organ, electric and upright bass, gadgets, and extensive collections of music boxes and bells. The vocal melody—inspired by partner Virginia Garcia Ruiz’s humming evoking Pan’s Labyrinth—was Allen’s first foray into voice, using wordless melody to allow listeners to remain protagonists. Flutes were meticulously recorded note by note from Balinese Sulings, Chinese souvenir shop finds, and bird-shaped ocarinas. Music boxes were wound slowly, sampled individually, then rearranged and tuned to double Virginia’s humming. A dying Casio SK-1 with a blown-out speaker is paired with a harmonium to form chordal textures.
Hour-long improvisations fed through Bastl Thyme and NanoVerb created long decaying delays, with the best moments culled for songs. Fire sounds emerged from fingernail clicks on piano keys. Field recordings captured dismantling a piano base, extinguishing candles, and sounds from a hospice. The Dragon’s voice speaks words from Allen’s invented language. Melody often sits in the bass—inspired by both goth and gamelan—with ornamentation working upward. The detailed approach mirrors a stippling, not dissimilar to Allen’s original artwork for the album cover, accumulating small bits into a vast picture through their obsessive work—in the shower, before falling asleep, mid-sentence.
Piano was re-recorded by engineer Katie Von Schleicher at Figure 8 Recording, with the album mixed by Paul Corley. Technical director Jim Freeman collaborated for four months on the neck joint and five months on the shoulders of the basswood rod puppet inspired by Bruce Schwartz’s ballerina. Freeman spent years developing a homemade LED system to light the puppet show from the stage, and his involuntary whistling while working was sneakily recorded and appears in the closing moments. Puppet fabrication was overseen by Miryam Moutillet and Lauder Weldon, with hybrid heads created by Duygu Bayar Ekren. Since the 2023 release of Tin Iso, Allen has found a home in NYC’s experimental puppetry community, receiving support from the Jim Henson Foundation and La MaMa.
Osni the Flare represents Tristan Allen’s continued world-building with meticulous continuity—many moving parts presented in sparkling cohesion, each component developing from one idea like a fantasy series inhabiting the same realm. The album achieves what Allen’s childhood self imagined while watching fantasy films: music that doesn’t sound like people playing instruments, but like the work of the fantastical world itself. Through the puppeteer’s craft of “telling true lies,” Allen invites listeners to experience something primal and direct. As Osni transforms from mortal to deity, the album traces not just the origin of fire, but the origin of myth itself.
1. Osni Opening
2. Act I: Garden
3. Act I: Loon
4. Act II: Dragon
5. Act II: Pyre
6. Act III: Umbra
7. Act III: Rite
8. Act IV: Flood
9. Act IV: Everglow
10. Osni Closing
