On June 19, 2021, Todd Barton headlined the Solstice Festival at the TANK Center for Sonic Arts, in Rangely, Colorado.  Known as one of the pioneers of the synthesizer on the West Coast, Todd also played recorder and shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) for his performance in The TANK, a 65-foot steel water tower renowned for decades for its profound internal reverberation.   This track is a montage of moments from his concert.  The first piece in this montage is De Lof Zangh Marie from 1648 by Jacob van Eyck, which Todd Barton performs on a tenor recorder.  The main body of music here is freely improvised on a Buchla Music Easel, an analog synthesizer. The montage concludes with Todd's original composition for shakuhachi, entitled Tai Hei (Big Peace). The TANK is posting Todd's recording as part of its TANK Masters Series, showcasing artists who have proven most sensitive to the vast instrument that is the TANK itself.

Todd Barton TANK Montage

Annea Lockwood is a legendary composer and sound-artist living in the Hudson Valley.  Her early works recording rivers and burning pianos opened up a world of sound to young composers.

The California Myotis bat, Myotis californicus, unlike a number of other bat populations, is currently secure, and is found in many locations in California – rock-walled canyons with water being a preference. It is a crevice rooster and thus also found in old mines, brushy niches, buildings, even under tree bark, and is known for its slow and “erratic” flight pattern, as the BLM, California, describes it. This call is being used for echolocation and has been slowed down to bring it into our hearing range. It is an excerpt of sounds above and below the human hearing range which Bob Bielecki and I are incorporating into a sound installation, ‘Wild Energy’. The installation is focused primarily on non-anthropogenic ‘sound’ waves from outside our hearing range, infrasound and ultrasound, sped up or slowed down respectively to bring them into range: solar oscillations, hydrothermal vents, gas vents on Kilauea, earthquakes, bats, moths and ultrasound generated within trees. Like ‘whistlers’, choruses are the exception, within our range but inaudible except by radio receivers.  These sound emanate from sources which affect us fundamentally and are interconnected, an inaudible web in which we move.   ‘Wild Energy’ will be included in the Caramoor Festival, Katonah, New York, along with a number of other site-specific sound installations in the summer of 2014.

Annea Lockwood "Myotis Bat"

Chorus waves are radio waves in the 0-10kHz range, generated in the intensely radioactive Van Allen Belts in the Earth’s magnetosphere. This event was recorded by the University of Iowa’s EMFISIS receivers and NASA’s RBSP Probes. Dr. Craig Kletzing has given me permission to use this beautiful recording as one of a number of atmospheric phenomena which Bob Bielecki and I are incorporating into a sound installation, ‘Wild Energy’. The installation is focused primarily on non-anthropogenic ‘sound’ waves from outside our hearing range, infrasound and ultrasound, sped up or slowed down respectively to bring them into range: solar oscillations, hydrothermal vents, gas vents on Kilauea, earthquakes, bats, moths and ultrasound generated within trees. Like ‘whistlers’, choruses are the exception, within our range but inaudible except by radio receivers.  These sound emanate from sources which affect us fundamentally and are interconnected, an inaudible web in which we move.   ‘Wild Energy’ will be included in the Caramoor Festival, Katonah, New York, along with a number of other site-specific sound installations in the summer of 2014.

Annea Lockwood "Chorus3"

I am a musician, a composer, a teacher, living in the SF Bay Area. I am a multi-instrumentalist with a strong background in jazz and classical piano. I enjoy playing accordion, violin and baglama in a Greek Rebetika band called The Disciples of Markos:  http://disciplesofmarkos.com
I also occasionally perform hillbilly bebop boogie country Americana on piano and accordion with Jimbo Trout and the Fishpeople: http://jimbotrout.com

The song, Azima-O, was taught to me by a friend who said it came from the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso. It is a song of celebration - the celebration of creation, of life.  This performance was crudely recorded on an iPhone, on moment's notice, by a team of men with whom I circle up twice a month, to play ultimate frisbee and then share, connect, and process what's happening in our lives. We ritually sing this song when we meet. This recording was made after a day of prepping a campsite for an event our team helps put on for young men each year - a young men's rite of passage called Young Men's Ultimate Weekend:  http://www.ymuw.org

I approach [listening] it as a way to "see". I like to visualize sounds as I hear and process them. Rhythm and pitches and form can become concrete shapes and colors for me, measurable with spatial depth, and pleasurable in their continuously evolving dance of impermanence.

[I'm from] Ann Arbor, Michigan [living in]San Rafael, California  http://reverbnation.com/kevingerzevitz

www.tanksounds.org


Kevin Gerzevitz "Azima-O"

Estimated as being created in the first century, C.E., "The Epitaph of Seikilos" is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) complete pieces of notated music ever discovered. Elaine DiFalco sang the song in The TANK during the open house in September 2015.  OPEN The TANK: http://kck.st/1VYAru8    www.tanksounds.org

Elaine diFalco - The Epitaph of Seikilos

This Christmas CD, "Rangely A-Caroling at The TANK"  www.tanksounds.org/caroling   captures the overwhelmingly beautiful acoustics of The TANK in a compelling, 40-minute collection of music that tells the story of the Nativity from many perspectives and in many styles.  In November, more than fifty residents of Rangely, Colorado, brought their voices and their instruments to The TANK to record.  On this track the Bishop and Campos families blend their voices in a gregorian chant version of "Oh Come, All ye Faithful" and their voices seem to fall through endless centuries to land in a time when Christmas was fresh and pure.

Oh Come All Ye Faithful

On September 30, 2016, Rinde Eckert came to the TANK for the first time and experienced its overwhelming acoustics.  Here are some recordings from when he stepped through the door, to the brilliant concert he gave to an audience in Rangely, Colorado that night.

08 Wallflowers

On the first OPEN MIC night at The TANK, Norah Patch and Aliyah Jackson play bull roars, accompanying Joshua Hill's violin.  Banners by George Peters transform the space.

BULL ROAR-tanksounds

Ron Miles, trumpet master, plays his horn in the amazing acoustics of the TANK, in Rangely, Colorado,with Bruce Odland and Mark McCoin on percussion.  The TANK is an acoustic wonder, a giant abandoned steel water tank with up to 40 seconds of reverberation in the high desert of Rangely, Colorado .  www.tanksounds.org

Pacem - Ron Miles, Bruce Odland, and Mark McCoin, from Bardo Tank

Tank Journey 05 (Nakai & Clipman)

Tank Journey 04 (Nakai & Clipman)

Tank Journey 03 (Nakai & Clipman)

Tank Journey 02 (Nakai & Clipman)

Tank Journey 01 (Nakai & Clipman)

TENET Vocal Artists
Jolle Greenleaf, soprano
Hank Heijink, lute

Recorded at The TANK Center for Sonic Arts, Rangely Colorado
Sept 7, 2019 by Jeremiah Moore

Reverberation has always inspired awe in human beings, and the architectural spaces of the Renaissance and Baroque periods of Europe--beautiful churches and palaces of stone and stained glass and vaulted ceilings--were profoundly resonant, echoing places.

Composers of the day played with this echo and created echoing effects in their music, and writers of song incorporated echo into their poetry and librettos.

Soprano Jolle Greenleaf and Lutenist Hank Heijink share Renaissance and early Baroque music especially composed in its day to highlight echoes in their most immediate form.

On N'entend Rien (TENET’s Jolle Greenleaf, Hank Heijink at The TANK)

Sentirete (TENET’s Jolle Greenleaf, Hank Heijink at The TANK)

Single-stringed river harps, played by the flowing water of the Rhein River, produced these serene melodies, which were recorded and then played back into the Tank’s deep resonance to make serene, harmonious tracks, full of peace, wellness, and the power of nature. 

For a year O+A, Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger, searched for sounds in the Rhine Valley in Switzerland, near a town called Rheinau, where they were making a healing installation. They recorded everything: rivers and rain, birds and snow, tiny streams and cornfields, crickets and goats. They recorded trees full of blackbirds at dusk, and spring birds at dawn. They strung harpsichord wires through the trees to record snowfall and built harps played by the leaves in the wind.

Their favorite activity was to build water harps, to hear the Rhine sing its song.  The river plays the hand-made harp like a bow plays the string of a violin. The river drags the string downstream, and the tension of the string pulls against it, creating a harmonic melody that modulates as the current’s invisible fluctuations dance up and down the string’s overtone series.

Bruce Odland then carried the river songs to Rangely and played them back in the Tank, lifting them into the steel cathedral space and filling it with the resonance and rhythms of nature’s ebb and flow.  

Here they are for you.  Think of them as a Gregorian chant, sung by the river.

For photos of this process and more information, click here. rheinau.hearingview.info/en/

Singing River 02 O+A

Singing River 01 O+A

What can I say about The Tank? Since I was a kid playing trombone I have been intrigued by how the architecture of a space interacted with the sound I was producing, sometimes reflecting it back in soft folds off of the surfaces - endless hallways, gymnasiums, theatres, tiled bathrooms - as if to inject a small dose of helium into the notes and make them expand. In that way, The Tank was a big dose of 'helium,' and that catalytic element became my sonic partner. And, as in any improvisation with another player, I tried to listen and experiment to see what excited the conversation, what I needed to omit, how much space could be sustained, what the pace and patterns of response were, how harmonies were received as opposed to linear lines, etc. Through that process these 'solo' guitar pieces became a kind of dialogue 'in duo' with the cylindrical architecture of the tank, how I could converse with it's reverberant responses, how it's 'helium' altered the normal order of events - attack, sustain, decay, and so forth. In this way we, The Tank and I, became springboards for each other's timbral vocabularies.

Recorded by Samantha Wade.
Mastered by Wayne Peet, Newzone Studio.

Antimony

Oppdrift

Montréal-based saxophonist, composer and improviser Ida Toninato has an ear for the unknown and a history of exploring reverberant spaces. She came to the Tank in September, 2018, to make this album, We Become Giants, which was beautifully post-produced at Studio Makina in Montréal by sound artist Blaise Borboën-Léonard.  We Become Giants was released this year on the Dragon's eye Recordings, a Los Angeles-based label curated by Yann Novak. “Powerful sonic ideas have stemmed from the magnificent reverberation of the Tank, a former water cistern located in the high desert, its magical vibe,” Ida notes. 

Exclaim! magazine called the record "a marvel of technique and emotion, of patience and careful post-production, combining long near-silences with beautiful and terrifying reverberant tones that multiply in fractal form, each detail as rich and intense as its source."

Buy the album here:

https://orcd.co/ida-toninato-we-become-giants

Antares

We Become Giants

Paul Klite's violin sound sweeps through the TANK like a bird, swooping and diving.  This session, "Monkey Birds" happened in 1992.  Paul was a brave human, with a huge heart, who inspired a deep connection to the earth and its people, a probing intellect who led by example.  We miss him.  Thank you Paul! Find out about THE FUTURE OF THE TANK www.tanksounds.org

The Soaring Bird - Paul Klite

In 1991 after an amazing rafting expedition down the Yampa river with Mho Salim, the survivors gathered at the Tank.  Sam directed us in chanting the words from KING of TIME, syllables from Vladamir Klebnikov's sound language of the future. Meanwhile sounds from Yampa windharps play inside the TANK.  Voices, Doug Young, Bobby, Bruce Odland, Sam Auinger.  www.tanksounds.org

So Se Sao - Sam Auinger, Bruce Odland and Friends, 1991

OPEN The TANK, kck.st/1VYAru8  The first piece I ever made in the TANK, recorded in 1976 on a Nakamichi 550 cassette recorder, then overlayed on a Scully 8 track analog machine.  Mark Fuller remastered it for the SAVE THE TANK Kickstarter campaign which was a success! Thank you all. For info on the tank, go to www.tanksounds.org


Sun Song - Bruce Odland, 1976 (the first piece recorded in The Tank)

Roomful of Teeth - Just Constellations by Michael Harrison

Titanium Bell

Bruce Odland - Glory Wheel

Joshua Hill - When The TANK Swallows The Sun

Samantha Wade - There Is A Fire

Roomful of Teeth- my heart comes undone by Judah Adashi

Ron Miles - Cornet Tanksong No. 3

All The Bells That Can Ring

Joseph Tompkins 4Round

The TANK Center for Sonic Arts is a world class reverberant space in Rangely, Colorado. www.tanksounds.org

To experience The TANK is visceral; each person who stands inside finds herself at the center of a world made up of sound. It is transformational.

The TANK, a 60-foot-tall, 30-foot-across, rusted and abandoned steel water tank, was discovered in Rangely, Colorado by sound artist and sonic thinker Bruce Odland in 1976. An acoustical marvel, with a forty-seconds-long, shifting, swirling reverberation, The TANK became a favorite unofficial, off-the-grid recording venue for Colorado musicians for nearly four decades.   

In 2012, the TANK was facing an uncertain future. Friends of The TANK — an eclectic group of artists, sonic explorers, and practical minds, all bound together by the experience of The TANK — was formed to save the sonic treasure from demolition. With contributions from more than a thousand Kickstarter backers over two campaigns, and the remarkable and ever-growing support of the people, businesses, and governments of the town of Rangely and Rio Blanco County, The TANK was purchased, restored, and repurposed, and is now home to The TANK Center for Sonic Arts

Now in its second season, The TANK Center for Sonic Arts seeks to share The TANK through artistic development, sonic research, education, and community outreach; to preserve, protect, and share The TANK; and to offer a unique and transformative audio laboratory for musicians, sound artists, educators, sonic tourists, and the community in a magnificent acoustic resource.

Tanksounds

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