Tommy working on "Machines" art project

Tommy Stinson and the magical drums
February 10, 2012 at 4:17 pm by Scott Waldman, Staff writer

If these people get their way, an old warehouse will be filled with mechanical metal drums, pounding out an unstoppable rhythm.

There is a project taking place in Hudson to turn old engines into a crazed orchestra of sorts. Artist Kris Perry is taking junk and welding it into something beautiful, in a rusty sort of way, and musical. The sound is somewhere between a steel drum band and a steampunk factory.

I know, I’ve seen it. The goal is to turn an entire industrial space at the Basilica Hudson into some version of a crazed musician’s funhouse in August. And, take it from one who knows, it actually sounds pretty rhythmic and beautiful in an unexpected way.

Perry needs your help with a little fundraising for the project, whose collaborators include Tommy Stinson of The Replacements and Guns and Roses, Melissa Auf der Maur of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, Elvis Perkins and Otto Hauser of Vetiver.

Go to this website to help contribute to the effort. They’re about halfway to the fundraising goal with about 10 days left.

Here’s how Perry describes the effort to transform industrial cast-offs and recycled materials into sculptural and musical objects:

“Some machines will be percussive, acting as large automated drumming machines. I will fabricate large wind instruments that have pipes like a church organ, and machines that create multiple tones by changing length, like a trombone. I will also create machines that make resonant sounds in the way that string instruments work. “