Victoria man transforms junk into acclaimed musical instruments

Gregory Kozak will by no means fail to remember his dad’s 1953 Pontiac.

Although it appeared like “a wonderful beast” when youthful Gregory tied the car’s outdated hubcaps to the eaves trough in the rain, they manufactured an “incredible percolating” audio that improved his lifestyle.

“I listened to it for days,” Gregory recollects with a smile.

It was so satisfying, the then 8-calendar year-previous began accumulating all kinds of points that designed seem — nails in jars, piles of keys, clothespins and paper in bike spokes.

“You have this mobile soundtrack that you produced your self,” Gregory recalls fondly of the his bike roaring all over the neighbourhood. “It just made me pleased.”

So it was not a surprise when Gregory grew up and pursued tunes in New York. But inspite of learning to participate in blues, jazz, and rock — even orchestral music — it didn’t come to feel the very same as the sounds he manufactured prior to.

“[One day] my spouse appeared at me in the eyes and explained, ‘What do you genuinely want to do?’”

Gregory responded by blurting out something to Justine about inventing his very own instruments.

“And she mentioned, ‘Okay! Let’s do it!’”

So, Gregory started out scouring industrial and creating web sites for just the proper junk.

“I have a ‘Spidey sense’ about it,” Gregory says.

Then he taught himself welding and metal fabrication, prior to making far more than 145 audio-creating sculptures.

“So it no for a longer time appears to be like like the trash it was,” Gregory says. “So it really appears to be like like one thing that no 1 would throw absent.”

His assortment of devices (which he refers to as his little ones and vows to never ever sell) involves a rotating drum, fabricating substance from a unsuccessful “fast ferry project” and a percussive equipment compiled from pieces of an amusement park journey.

There is also the discarded washing machine hose, which Gregory hooked up to a bagpipe reed and a balloon that he dubbed ‘The Annoyaphone.’

Following he blows up the balloon by the reed and the hose, it deflates with a higher-pitched vibrato.

“Isn’t that aggravating?” Gregory laughs playfully.

When that instrument is foolish, what Gregory’s carried out with army surplus supplies, like discarded artillery shells from the Vietnam War, is considerable.

He utilized the shells to produce a xylophone of sorts, which Gregory performs with mallets, to create the kind of resonate notes that create goosebumps.

“[I wanted to] make anything lovely that people will delight in and occur to,” Gregory says. “Rather than run away from.”

Now Gregory and his band Scrap Arts Music use the devices to phase dynamic performances that make rave opinions all over the globe.

“If I can do it,” Gregory states humbly. “Anyone can do it.”

He hopes his operate will influence folks the way those people old Pontiac hubcaps transformed him — to reconsider the possibilities of the discarded and be encouraged to rework matters for the much better.

“The world is a massively resourceful location,” Gregory smiles. “You can maintain creating.”
