“‘Near-misses of a crash-test dummy’ is a very Versatile album… twitchy vibe kept me from being lulled into a false sense of security… lovely lyrical passages amongst the mayhem.” Keith Rodway (Good Missionaries, Column 258 – Necessary Animals, Jury Service, Anthony Moore).
A nomadic life-style with no real home. Born of Hungarian Romany immigrants (on a creel fishing vessel whilst fleeing Havana during the Cuban Missile Crisis in ’62), Kalamari’s musical tastes became influenced by his family’s constant adaptation to prevailing cultures – from New Orleans to Michigan, Mexican Chiapas to Argentina, then repatriation in Europe. As a troubadour, his performances have taken him from Johannesburg to Kiev, Nagasaki to Minsk, playing random encountered small café’s to a Solidarnosc concert for Lech Walesa. “Music helps people get through and that goes for any quality or genre. You can make music with a knife and fork. I don’t care if i’m playing lounge-jazz in a cramped café, Dada gatherings, boondocks, a French-Polynesian bodega, or a funeral in Ainazi, Latvia. I love to see people’s intimate expressions – sorrow, humour, bemusement, discomfort or even derision… it drives me. People need the instant kick music provides, even if they don’t know it or register it, it’s doing something. For Romany it is food, our social adhesive for when words are useless; emotions and ethereal elements there are no words for.”
Living in the UK, sharing digs with Malaysian quantum mathematics masters students and Rastafarians in Manchester’s 80’s Hulme Crescent, below a prostitute in Whalley Range, then a brief spate in Sheffield, where he was introduced to King Crimson and Keith Tippet, before hitting the student union halls with the expansion of jazz-fusion; influencers throughout his life extended from Bebop-Deluxe, Colosseum, Amun Dull II, Gentle Giant, Chic Corea, Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Chicago, Brand X, Aydin Esen, Michael Brecker, Jon Hassell, Al Di-Meola, Fred Frith (and later Anthony Moore), Soft Machine, Robert Wyatt , Boris and a Bosphorus collective, Mode Plagal; all tearing up conventions of music, as Ennio Morricone had.
Now he takes contemplation from world cinema – Tarkovsky, Tarr, Antonioni, Keislowsky, Malle, Polanski, Lynch, Jarmusch, Altman, Lumet, Carax, Soderbergh, Kaurismaki, Figgis, Gondry, Gatliff, Lanthimos, Roy Andersson, P.T.Anderson, Wes Anderson… etc.
Somewhat reclusive now, in more recent times, he entered the electronic-sonics oeuvre, co-founding ‘gloppaddagloppadda’ and collaborating with Keith Rodway – “I decided to (at last) bite the bullet and go virtually social. I hope nobody minds. Some have tagged me with another person of little distinction on here. I deny all of it. I’ve never recorded my solo jazz, but (thanks to soundingoffuk.com), i thought fuck it, i aint gonna get hate mail am i?”
Listen and download lossless audio on BANDCAMP.
https://soundingoffuk.bandcamp.com/album/near-misses-of-a-crash-test-dummy
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