Machinedrum (Travis Stewart) is a music producer and film composer originally from North Carolina, now residing in California.
Travis has released multiple albums on labels such as Ninja Tune, Planet Mu, LuckyMe, Hotflush and Merck. He has produced for a wide range of vocalists including Azealia Banks, A$AP Ferg, Shelley FKA DRAM, Tanerélle, Jesse Boykins III, Theophilus London and Dawn Richard.
Additionally, Machinedrum has worked alongside producers Jimmy Edgar for their project J-E-T-S, Braille (Praveen Sharma) under their alias Sepalcure, and Om Unit for their rave inspired footwork project Dream Continuum. Travis has also collaborated with instrumentalists like piano virtuoso Tigran Hamasyan, progressive guitarist Tosin Abasi (Animals As Leaders), versatile drummer Ian Maciak, multi instrumentalist Laura Escudé, and jazz drummer Steve Lyman. Machinedrum has remixed artists such as Solange, Bonobo, Kelis, Rudimental, Jamie Lidell, DJ Shadow, Emily King, Noisia, SBTRKT, The Glitch Mob, Eprom, and even Johnny Cash.
Machinedrum has scored film and TV under his real name Travis Stewart. Credits include Aronofsky’s Black Swan and the German true-crime drama Das Geheimnis Des Totenwaldes known internationally as Dark Woods. In addition to film and TV scoring, he also helped score the off-broadway musical Camp Wanatachi.
Travis Stewart was born in Eden, North Carolina. He was exposed to a wide range of musical influences in his childhood. His grandfather played pedal steel for a country band and gave Stewart his first guitar. His first recordings were made at his grandparents’ house, around the age of 5 or 6. His parents kept a house full of instruments, and a singer-songwriter cousin continually exposed him to new sounds and ideas. He fostered an interest with polyrhythms while playing marching snare in his high school band, and the djembe in an African ensemble. Outside of school, Stewart played in two local alternative bands and a jazz band, as well as several percussion ensembles before gravitating more towards electronic music around the time of 8th grade. Using handed down computers, he began to produce his own music using DOS based tracking software Impulse Tracker, and connected with a community of like-minded musicians over the Internet via IRC. He created the Machinedrum project during his final two years of high school, between 1998 and 1999. In 2001, at the age of 19, he released his first record as Machinedrum, Now You Know, on Merck Records. After graduation, he attended Full Sail University in Florida to study audio engineering.
Following college, Stewart moved to New York City and got involved with Brooklyn-based boutique label Normrex (founded by DMC World Champion DJ IE.merg). During that time, he started producing for vocalists including Tiombe Lockhart, Theophilus London, Jesse Boykins III, Azealia Banks, MeLo-X and Mickey Factz, to name a few. For Theophilus London, Stewart produced and mixed the Jam Mixtape as well as This Charming Mixtape. For Azealia Banks, he produced the tracks “Barbie Shit”, “Luxury”, “1991”, “Van Vogue”, “L8R”, and “Fantasea” among others.
Since then, Machinedrum has released multiple career defining albums like Room(s) (and an Extended version) on Planet Mu, and both Vapor City and Human Energy on Ninja Tune. Additionally, his collaborations with other producers have broadened his audience even further with projects like J-E-T-S and Sepalcure. Machinedrum’s latest album A View of U features an incredible cast of collaborators including Sub Focus, Chrome Sparks, Father (Awful Records), Freddie Gibbs, Mono/Poly (Brainfeeder), Tigran Hamasyan, Jesse Boykins III, Rochelle Jordan and Tanerélle. In April of 2021, Machinedrum debuted “A View Of U Live”, a performance created with visionary Daito Manabe and his brilliant team Rhizomatiks. His follow up EP Psyconia, released September 2021 via Ninja Tune, includes tracks featuring Deniro Farrar, Angelica Bess, and Jorge Elbrecht.
On April 15, 2022, his newest project elysian was released under his tstewart alias on Mercury KX. Inspired by the beauty of Elysian Park in Los Angeles and the meaning behind its name, tstewart created this ambient and ethereal soundtrack in dedication to his daughter Billie Josephine Stewart. Billboard listed elysian as one of fifteen most anticipated electronic LPs dropping this Spring season. In conjunction with the album came the elysian walk app. In addition to encouraging exploration in the great outdoors, users can use their GPS location to unlock new content such as unreleased b-sides to elysian, additional versions of songs, as well as the stems and MIDIs to some of the tracks.
Travis has performed at iconic venues such as Red Rocks Amphitheater, Brooklyn Mirage, and Meow Wolf, as well as various festivals including Glastonbury, Coachella, Movement, Electric Forest, Parklife, Field Day, Gray Area, Lovebox, Escape Halloween, HARD Summer, and Shambhala Festival.
Most recently, Stewart began his residency on Rinse FM titled “Now You Know Machinedrum”. The first episode premiered May 3, 2022, showcasing some of his unreleased music in a uniquely curated mix. On May 13, 2022, he dropped a mix for BBC6 Music titled “Lose Yourself with Machinedrum”, including ambient, new classical, lofi folk, and field recordings. Looking further into the future, Jimmy Edgar & Travis Stewart have a new J-E-T-S project to be released on Innovative Leisure in Q1 2023, and a new Machinedrum album on Ninja Tune is in the works and will be announced Q4 2023 for a Q1 2024 release.
Stewart is a rarity in dance music. Aside from his chameleon-like ability to skip effortlessly between tempos and styles, he has earned the respect and admiration of his peers and fans alike for his consistently progressive approach to electronic music.