In this day and age, using a full-size replica of a military tank nicknamed “Panzer” in your performance piece might raise some eyebrows and maybe even spark some ugly controversy. But young Berlin-based artist Nik Nowak isn’t taking any precautions. His slick, refurbished war machine is equipped with massive speakers as opposed to guns and is designed as a musical instrument of sorts, translating his theoretical research on sound material to produce raw and methodic music.Sound Tank is the latest in Nowak’s line of machine-music hybrids, fully loaded with powerful speakers that connect to an embedded control station. Using an MPC—the infamous MIDI sequencer/sampler that changed the course of both hip-hop and electronic music—along with a mixing console, he produces a martial soundtrack that reaches ridiculous decibel levels, literally assaulting listeners with a deafening wall of sound.Oh, and did we mention the thing moves? Here’s a video of Nowak driving it around his studio:While the tunes this monster machine creates aren’t exactly the kind of thing you’d find playing at the latest night club, that hasn’t stopped Nowak from performing with the tank all over the world. Here’s a video of one such performance:
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