Pierre Bastien

Pierre Bastien (born 1953) is a French musician and constructor of mechanical orchestras. Using Meccano sets and clockwork mechanisms to animate acoustic instruments — trumpets, violins, marimbas, small percussion — he builds machines that perform his compositions autonomously, producing a music that is simultaneously childlike in construction and formally rigorous. His collaborations with Jah Wobble (Mecanoids, 1997) and his extensive solo catalogue on Baskaru and other labels document a practice that is entirely singular: somewhere between kinetic sculpture, early mechanical music, and experimental composition. He has performed and exhibited internationally across four decades.