Back at Colonnade House after a successful 2017 exhibition, we welcome Salvage Sounds to the small gallery in September for the return of another week-long “pop-up music shop”, featuring their range of handmade instruments to suit all budgets.
Salvage Sounds are a family run “alternative luthier” based here in Worthing, specialising in the creation of non-conventional stringed instruments centred around re-purposed parts and upcycled materials. Whether it be an old cigar box, empty coffee tins, the registration plate of a long-scrapped vehicle, or a wooden pencil case – the designs are often quirky and unusual, yet always are functional, playable musical art pieces in their own right… Art that creates art.
Each instrument is deliberately simplified, with less strings than their standard equivalents, so that the enjoyment of playing can be accessible to all ages and abilities. The production process is similarly stripped-down. There are no workshops or heavy-duty machinery involved in the manufacture of the instruments. Save for the use of a basic electric drill, each is made almost entirely using only remedial hand tools: saws, files, hammer and chisel… and lots of sandpaper.
Since developing this passion, we find we now look on the world differently and often catch ourselves scouring the edges of pavements for discarded nuts, bolts, screws and bottle-caps that might be incorporated into one of our creations. Or looking in the window of every Charity Shop we pass for wooden boxes that may have the chance to become reborn as a ukulele.
It was in wishing to share this passion that we began Salvage Sounds, so please feel free to come and browse or speak with us if you wish to ask any questions, enquire about our instruments, listen to them being played – or even to try them out for yourself.
