All music composed by David Kollar

David Kollar - El. guitars, Ronroco, Guitalele, Electronics, Synth, Sound Processing, Bass, Vocal 12
Erik Truffaz - Trumpet 1,2, 12,14             
Arve Henriksen - Trumpet 5,10,12
Pat Mastelotto - Poetry reading12
Christian Fennesz -  guitar, synth, electronics 11

Sick Doll 's dream inspired by Piotr Iľjič Čajkovskij.

Cover art by Peter Popelka.

Recorded at Mystery Stable studio Presov, Kaiserstudios  Vienna.
Mixed and mastered at Klakson studio.


The album is dedicated to Andrej Tarkovsky and Jozef Kukura.


I started to work on the album from October 2018. My initial ideas were sent to Eric Truffaz. Gradually, I engaged Arve Henriksen, Pat Mastelotto and Christian Fennesz in the process of creation. I also played my sketches for Peter Popelka, a painter, who has an atelier above my studio. We were holding endlessly long academic conversations on creation and art. That's why I decided that the album cover should undoubtedly be made by him. Sculpting in Time is inspired by Andrej Tarkovsky's theory that a movie itself is sculpting of time sculptures. I perceive it similarly in music.  These 14 tracks on the album are my time sculptures of what I went through last year. I would like to thank all the musicians participating in the album.  I thank Erik Truffaz for the opportunity, Arve Henriksen for being a bottomless well of inspiration, Pat Mastelotto for his giant and always helpful heart. I thank Christian Fennesz for his time and musical structures. I thank my family Janka, David and Barbara for their patience, I thank Jan Sudzin for always telling me "let's releaset it, David". I thank Marek Sálka, Vlado Kačala, my father, Peter Ondruš, Valer Dugas, Tomáš Mutina, Valerij Kupka, Peter Michalovič, Blanka Berkyová for their trust and support  and last but not least all the people who were close to me during this creative period.

I recorded this song a few days ago on my new baritone acoustic guitar with Cymbow.

I was inspired by Krzysztof Penderecki's Polymorphia.

Loud headphones recomended.

Improvised concert at Hevhetia festival in Budapest music center September 2019.

David Kollar - guitar
Zbigniew Chojnacki - accordion

www.hevhetia.com

Illusion of a Separate World is the meeting between innovative Slovakian guitarist, film music composer and sound designer David Kollar (Steven Wilson, Pat Mastelotto, Fennesz, Marco Minnemann, Eivind Aarset) and Norwegian trumpet maestro Arve Henriksen. Shimmering soundscapes and haunting melodies mixed with soundtrack music, ethnic influences, electronic explorations, jazz hybrids, and post-rock riffs are at the core of this meeting.

David Kollar and Arve Henriksen started their collaboration after they met in 2017 and played just twice before the recording. “I played last year at the Spectaculare festival in Prague,” said David “I had a solo performance and after me there was Arve playing with Christian Fennesz. At the end of the festival, we shared our contact details. In few months, we met again on the stage at Hevhetia festival in Slovakia.” The performance was such a bonding experience that the two chose to record an album together.

In December 2017, David spent a week in the city of Faenza, Italy as the guest of his fellow trumpeter and friend Paolo Ranieri. This was the perfect setting to start sketching out improvisations that would become part of Illusion of a Separate World. David drew inspiration from life’s trials and tribulations or from the environment around him. “I played them as musical diaries,” said David. Soundscapes, moody riffs and rhythmic works emerged. He recorded 17 tracks and then gave them to Arve, who layered trumpet, voice and electronics over them.

Through this joining of two unique worlds, in both geographical and cultural senses, the duo has created an anthemic album which reveals an intimate connection. It spans from the moments of quietness that slowly turn into walls of orchestral sounds like in Night Navigator, to the tribal drumming rhythms that Henriksen enriches with his voice-like trumpet in Chimera. When the guitarist transforms a simple clacking on string into a weird rhythm like in Silk spinning, Henriksen then turns it into a pastoral melody. When the trumpeter switches to his trademark soft-speaking voice, like in Mirror Transformations, Kollar places himself in a more subtle context, camouflaging his guitar in synth-like drapings. The Slovakian guitarist then takes the stage and hints at his Americana influences with a delicate guitar and trumpet solo in Solarization, that eventually morphs in an ethnic-flavored electronic experience. Suspended over Kollar’s cloudy drone, Castles in the Air is Arve Henriksen at his best, playing one of his most iconic solos. But he can also turn in some of the most intricate and haunting melodies like in the unsettling Roving Observer, which Kollar initially took inspiration from movie director Tarkovsky.

Intimate, intense, passionate and subtle, Illusion of a Separate World is two artists showing how easy is for them to create music that is immediate and tremendously complex, haunting and gorgeous at same time.

2017 Hevhetia records
"I began work on this album in Autumn 2016. It started with experimentation of sounds from a modular synthetsizer, then I added the guitars and Paolo Ranieri added the trumpets. Some of his riffs I also processed through the synthesizer and each day a song was formed. I used a minimum guitars.

Work on this album was influenced by the diagnosis of my good friend Lukas Halicky, just 34 years old, father of 3 kids with a brain tumour.
Things spiralled downward, as I trusted in a positive result of treatment for my friend and I wanted to help. All this influenced the atmosphere of the songs. This album is a story, like Dostoevsky's notes from the underground. That book fell off its shelf when I thought about the title of this album and its conception. In these circumstances, the painting
from Dušan Očkovič summarised my thoughts (see the album cover). A smoking man deep in thought wearing a striped jumper. I see there Jesus who doesn't want to look me in the eye.
But, as long as the cigarette burns, there is always hope.