sonambiente berlin 2006 | festival für hören und sehen | klang kunst sound art

essay

Kalle Laar [Christian Wolf]: In performances of his Temporäres Klangmuseum (Temporary Sound Museum), musician Kalle Laar cultivates a very unique sound culture. If Erik Satie wanted to furnish a room with his Musique d’Ameublement, then Kalle Laar could be said to introduce sustained imaginary movement into the room, with the effect that one must constantly reassure oneself about the music. Because what Laar conjures up at the mixing board with LPs, CDs and electronics is nothing other than constantly dissolving sounds and structures. Every moment becomes a moment of transition. One can never feel secure.
Kalle Laar, born in Germany but of Latvian-Estonian descent, was active in the early 1990s improvisation scene as the guitarist in a duo with Takashi Kazamaki. At his DJ performances, one instantly senses that a musician who plays with forms and their self-dissolution is working the board. Turntables and mixing board are legitimate musical instruments for him, merely different to deal with than the usual ones. Laar's music has meanwhile developed such sensitivity to detail that the question of stylistic and cultural borders or categories no longer even comes up – there is solely the flow of sounds. Laar himself speaks of »audio voyages«. One could also call them ear movies, for the sounds, the embedded songs, the references and quotations unfold as if in a film scenario that is musical through and through. Exotic and quotidian elements stand side by side – and each transforms the other, which not only sharpens the awareness for fine sounds and differences, but also relativises previously held ideas about what is familiar and what is strange.