The Potts Report: January 2015

soundShoppe January 2015: Wild Don Lewis and Erin Worra duet
soundShoppe January 2015: Wild Don Lewis and Erin Worra duet

2015 came in with a bang. After a holiday hiatus soundShoppe returned with a well attended and somewhat raucous session fueled by the irrepressible energy of the musicians associated with the Vernon based WHEREAS collective.Sax wielding Erin Worra (PRESENT) blasted through some amazing horn duets with soundShoppe alumni Wild Don Lewis (Small Drone Orchestra) while other collective members drove the wall of sound along with the rest of us.

The WHEREAS affiliated Josie J (PRESENT, Divine Brick) demonstrated his prowess on the Buto Fluto, an instrument of his own creation (a sort of electro-acoustic adventure in circuit bending.)Henry Webster (Vegetables) and Per Stern-Lewis were first time participants. Henry plays violin through effects pedals. Per is here from Sweden where he plays in a group. He was processing his instrument through an ancient Roland reverb unit.

soundShoppe January 2015: Josie J on Buto Fluto
soundShoppe January 2015: Josie J on Buto Fluto

Veteran soundShoppers Artzenkraft, with oscillators and  radio, and Roberto Palazzo, guitar and effects, really got into the frenzy. Roberto is a great soundShoppe example. Roberto is a guitar player from a more traditional musical background. Over the years through SASSAS events and soundShoppe he has experienced serialism, just intonation, and a number of other musical strategies from which he has been able to glean some techniques to use in his improvising. What can I say, it’s noisy, it’s fun and sometimes you learn something…