The Instant Drone Factory is a multi-national music project that was founded in 2005 on the occasion of that year’s Schiphorst Avant-Garde Festival, curated by Faust founding member Jean-Hervé Péron. The German guitarist and guitar synthesizer player Frank Gingeleit was booked for the “drone section” of this festival, but at that time he had no band. As he didn’t want to go onstage with a taped or sampled “backing band”, he had asked some of his musical friends whether they might like to play with him. As there was no time for a rehearsal, they agreed upon the concept of “instant composing”, everything to be a bit in the shape of musical drones, what Gingeleit was asked for, and “fabricated on the spot” – hence the name Instant Drone Factory, initially thought of as some kind of a “moniker” for a one-time-event. The band clicked well with the audience, went to a studio later that year and recorded their debut CD “Critical Mass” that was released in 2006 by the German independent label Fünfundvierzig.

Gingeleit and the Italian guitarist Andrea Tabacco decided to continue their musical collaboration and sharpened the concept of the project. Live shows and studio work should be performed in the way of public “talk shows” with the sole difference that all communication takes place via musical instruments. No rehearsals, no consultations about style or genre, not even a given key for a tune. There’s just the agreement that nobody should play himself into the foreground or exhibit personal “virtuosity”. The project was booked again for the next year's Schiphorst festival, this time with musicians from Japan and an additional keyboarder. The show was recorded and released on CD as “Live” in 2008, again by Fünfundvierzig. Some time later the Captain Trip label from Tokyo issued a Japanese edition of "Live" that's currently about to become a rare and expensive collector's item.

As the sonic quality of “Live” is rather “documentary”, the same unit met again in a studio some time later, enlarged by guests on vocals and grand piano. This time, the studio was the famed Electric Avenue Studio in Hamburg, Germany, with Tobias Levin, a well known German Indie Rock producer, at the recording console. In the meantime, Gingeleit had graduated from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, with a degree in music production and built up his own music production company, Living Tunes. His goal was to let their third CD sound as if this style of music was released by a major company. “Ho Avuto Paura del Mare” (Italian for “I was frightened by the sea”) was released on Gingeleit’s own new label, Living Tunes Records, in 2011 in a close distribution partnership with Fünfundvierzig.

“Moving Into Darker Places”, their fourth album, is already recorded, and will be released later in 2014. As the musicians of the Instant Drone Factory come from a vast variety of musical styles and genres, they’re almost inevitably performing and recording tunes every now and then that are “off label” with respect to their general approach. Some of these tunes are surely worthwhile to be published, but simply wouldn’t fit on any of their “regular” album CDs. A selection of these tunes will be released as “Gimme More - The Club EP” later this year.