Description

Gas Tank Orchestra is an experimental music group playing songs that range from avant-garde percussion to hypnotic, trance inducing melodies. The instruments were conceived of and built by Artist/Musician Gregory J. Wildes and are played by the heart of New Orleans glam-freak-ritual gurus. The instruments were created from car gas tanks off the streets, adapted with saw blades, wires, and pvc tubing. There is a full orchestra of sounds. A rhythm section with a stand up bass, slit drum, and kalimba. A horn section with clarinet, oboe, trombone, and didjeridoo; and a string section including a dulcimer, and harp. But this is not just noise, GTO has the strong pulsing rhythms of traditional drumming intertwined with the intriguing dimensions of Sun Ra. With its experimental instrumentation, the primal quality becomes prehistoric industrial, and at times even melodic. The Gas Tank Orchestra is an industrial party gathering. The great city of New Orleans and it’s complex culture of French Quarter decadence and 9th ward decline combine inside electric scrap metal that billows rhythmic melodies that personify the district in which they were born.

The club looks like a junkyard, but wait, I hear sounds stirring amidst the salvage. A music emerges, strange and tentative. A few odd tones plucked, a searching call, a screeching response, a deep rumbling, ringing, gonging thronging, and then a pulse -- the Gas Tank Orchestra comes to life! Yeah U right, baby doll, homemade instruments made out of automobile gas tanks gathered from these Crescent City streets. Add some strings, reeds, hoses, and hack-saw blades and ya got yourself a regular symphony. . . or should I say irregular? The musicians play off each other to create an entity that takes on a life of its own. Despite their appearance, they know what they are doing. Switching tanks between numbers, the players reveal yet another facet of the gem they are crafting. For those who listen there is a lot to hear.

Look for the Gas Tank Orchestra, they’re worth finding.