Subterranean 'Tank' Hosts New Music

By Nick Pinto
POSTED FEBRUARY 1, 2008

On a recent Thursday night, a handful of musicians and video artists were milling around the Tank, a small basement performance space at 279 Church St. A loose collective of experimental electronic musicians plugged in their equipment and ran sound checks, while visual artists cued up layered and distorted clips from breakdancing films, ballet footage, and grindhouse movies.

When the show finally began, there were all of a dozen people in the room, most of them on the bill.

Undaunted, the performers worked through their sets: Maxx Klaxon melded Kraftwerkian vocoder pop with faux-authoritarian imagery; Vusac interwove much-abused samples with constantly shifting rhythms; and the Megadrives, a duo from Baltimore, finished with a set of their own electronic collaboration.

Even leaving aside the theater, film, dance and comedy that are also shown at the Tank (www.thetanknyc.org), it’s hard to identify a typical night of music there.

With any given month booked with rock, contemporary classical, electronic, and a wide range of experimental music, it seems that the only constant is variety. (Among this month’s offerings, the “Uncaged Toy Piano Roadshow” and  rockers Ringo Deathstarr.) This night had many of the hallmarks of a Tank show, however: an intimate atmosphere, unpredictable and unusual music, and an audience, albeit small, eager to hear musicians trying new things.

That’s not to say that the Tank’s musical events are always sparsely attended. Indeed, some of its bigger ones, like the Blip festival, devoted to music made on reprogrammed Nintendos and other obsolete video game hardware, draw thousands of fans and artists from all over the world,  and have to be staged at larger venues.

Though some of its shows have rocketed to popular success, the Tank remains committed to taking a flyer on lesser-known groups unlikely to draw a crowd.

“When we started the Tank, I envisioned a place for young artists and people just starting out to experiment, where you don’t have to pay to play or get 100 people to show up,” said Mike Rosenthal, who co-founded the venue in 2003 and curates its electronic music programming. “I wanted a place where there isn’t any financial burden, so everyone would be able to take risks on things that were way out there.”

It helps that the Tank has a friendly  agreement with its acts: After taking the first 10 ($5–$10) tickets for overhead, the Tank splits the door with the artists.

While some of the acts eventually fizzle, others, like the monthly Pulsewave showcase of 8-bit music performed on antique video game hardware, grow and thrive for years.

The Tank can take risks with new, unknown, or just strange acts because much of its revenue comes from its more than 1,000 members and foundation and city grants.

Rosenthal said the Tank’s mission goes beyond providing artists with “four walls and a sound system.” He curates the programs to help them succeed.

“We try to figure out who’s going to work well together, whose audiences will enjoy each other’s work, and put them in touch with each other,” he said. “It’s good to see relationships between artists getting built at the Tank.”

Packing up after his performance last month, Max Clarke, who performed as Maxx Klaxon, was smiling.

“I really like playing here,” he said, looking around the spare black room lit by three chandeliers on dimmers. “It has all the casual chillness of someone’s living room, but at the same time they’ve got good sound and video equipment, and they pay musicians. That’s an unusual combination. It means a lot to have a place like this.”

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