David Kollar 2025
Establishing connection with his headspace, Prague inhabitant opens up psyche for all to hear what’s going on in there.
Calls
While ordinary people have intimate relationships with phones, devious devices which – as metaphorically inanimate objects, rather than spyware containers – listen to and look at everything humans do, there’s an even stronger bond between the gadgets and creators of original content, who not only speak via these apparatuses but also entrust their electronic brains with ideas. That’s what David Kollar’s been doing for years now, before realizing how it all amounts to a sort of diary, where entries are expressed through sound, and how playing (with) sound is a creative process per se. And so, giving the phrase “The musician as a musical piece” an aural form, he designed a most engaging collage of spoken word, naturally lifted off the mobile as opposed to thought up specifically for the album, electronic effects and melodies. Of course, David doesn’t ignore a phonetic link between “Kollar” and “Calls” – perhaps, indeliberate, if ingenious – yet such details should keep the Slovakian composer’s listeners delighted.
The multilayered inner dialogue of opener “Eastern Dialect” – where phone line’s beeps interweave with twangy snippets of guitar lines, and where David’s voices, talking in different tongues, cross and diverge – may seem amorphous, only all aspects of this sonic mélange are mesmeric, albeit a bit gloomy. The dark veil will be lifted on “Too Much Me?” which is given a solid groove and illuminated by the blistering licks of Erik Truffaz’s trumpet that bleed into the riff-laden, jagged-edged “It’s Me” to take the ivories-driven, improvisatory microcosm towards heavier jive. On the other hand, the introspective “Mi Chiamo David Kollar” wraps the artist’s soliloquy into minimalistic creepiness, and the frantic “No One Picks Up” which features Marco Minnemann’s drums and Paolo Raineri’s brass that bolster Kollar’s six-string assault – also an integral element in the acoustically tinctured tapestry of “It Is What It Is” – adds anxiety to the album’s context.
The worry won’t get removed neither in the throbbing “This Film Will End You” whose almost orchestral disquiet comes underscored with mind-blasting humming, nor in the ruminative “Shoveling English” whose chilling atmosphere harks back to 2024’s "Behind The Frozen Window" – but it will vanish in the trancey “Too Unacting And Bad” that’s chugging like a train. And when “Every Name Matters” rolls credits to colleagues and supporters over a buzzing backdrop, both excitement and fatigue set in – to be shattered with a sweeping instrumental wave. A staggering opus.
*****
