David Kollar 2024
Behind The Frozen Window
Poetic paean to the wonders of winter as perceived from within the heat of a hearth.
Slowly but surely, David Kollar’s been descending down to earth from cosmic orbits his earlier records seemed to occupy and embracing the beauty of his immediate surroundings such as the landscape view opening from his dwelling on a snowy day. As a result, the close-to-home perspective which began imbuing the guitarist’s music on "Where Are They . . . " and continued with "Echoes Of Hopeful Melancholy" found its ultimate expression on his next studio opus. Not for nothing each of the record’s six numbers has a double title, English and Slovakian, one preceding the other in different order; and not for nothing the composer invited daughter Barbara to read, again in the two languages, poems by his friend Valery Kupka, and then set this series of intimate moments to most delicate, acoustic pieces.
From the resonant twang of the titular epic’s acoustic lace, in which pauses and strum play equally important role in marrying melody to mood and shifting pregnant quietude towards worry and back to serenity, to “Drops Of Rain” in which Arve Henriksen’s trumpet licks help Kollar paint the piece’s title, there’s hardly a moment where David’s solemn emotions don’t show. And while “On My Mother’s Palm” gives his recital a groovy background before noise and riff try and reign supreme behind the voice only to get dissolved in a waterfall of sonic assault, “Freeze The Last Smiles” brings on a delicate folksy soundscape, and the strings-drenched “Where Snow Was Dwindling” is sculpting glacial detachment over a verses-driven harmony. But then, a brilliant reading of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s theme of “The Revenant” once more injects silence into soulful turmoil that’s surrendered to tranquility. Comfort on a cold afternoon doesn’t get to feel warmer than here.
*****
