| Pomegranates | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | June 24, 2015 [1] | |||
| Genre | Electronic, experimental | |||
| Length | 75:15 | |||
| Label | Other People | |||
| Nicolás Jaar chronology | ||||
| ||||
Pomegranates is a 2015 album by Chilean-American composer Nicolas Jaar, intended as an unofficial alternative soundtrack to the 1969 Soviet Armenian film The Color of Pomegranates . [1] [2]
Pomegranates was produced as an unofficial alternative soundtrack to the 1969 Soviet Armenian film The Color of Pomegranates , which was directed by Sergei Parajanov . [1] [2] Jaar first watched the film in 2015, at a friend's suggestion. [3] By this time, he had already composed some of the songs that would later appear on the album. [3] In a note accompanying the released album, Jaar wrote that he was "dumbfounded" by his first viewing of the film: [3]
"I felt the aesthetic made complete sense with the strange themes I had been obsessed with over the past couple of years... I was curious to see what my songs sounded like when synced with the images, which turned into a 2-day bender where I soundtracked the entire film, creating a weird collage of the ambient music I had made over the last 2 years." [3]
Jaar described the record as an "extremely personal" one, while also stating that, with Pomegranates, he had "failed at doing the kind of ambient record [he] really wanted to do." [4]
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Garden of Eden" | 5:40 |
| 2. | "Construction" | 5:44 |
| 3. | "Pass the Time" | 3:48 |
| 4. | "Survival" | 5:20 |
| 5. | "The Fool and His Harem" | 3:30 |
| 6. | "Nothingness" | 1:57 |
| 7. | "Near Death" | 3:19 |
| 8. | "Beasts of This Earth" | 4:22 |
| 9. | "Fall Into Time" | 2:24 |
| 10. | "Folie à deux" | 3:18 |
| 11. | "Screams at the Edge of Dawn" | 2:23 |
| 12. | "Divorce" | 3:53 |
| 13. | "Three Windows" | 5:11 |
| 14. | "Tourists" | 4:06 |
| 15. | "Shame" | 1:55 |
| 16. | "Tower of Sin" | 1:32 |
| 17. | "Club Kapital" | 4:56 |
| 18. | "Volver" | 2:42 |
| 19. | "Spirit" | 3:32 |
| 20. | "Muse" | 5:43 |
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Consequence of Sound | B [5] |
| Pitchfork | 7.6/10 [2] |
Mark Richardson, writing for Pitchfork , wrote that "there are long stretches, particularly in the early going, where it's more of a sound piece than what is usually described as 'music', but the album's second half contains some of Jaar's loveliest tunes." [2] Sasha Geffen, writing for Consequence of Sound , said that given its length, "Pomegranates doesn't always feel like an album or a soundtrack so much as it feels like an experiment in sculpting time." [5]
A screening of The Color of Pomegranates featuring a live performance of Jaar's alternative soundtrack was originally advertised for 22 February 2017, at the Cinefamily in Los Angeles, California. [6] However, this performance was replaced with the film's original soundtrack, due to objections from the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute and The Film Foundation that the live performance would not present the film as Parajanov intended it. [7]
Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It is often "peaceful" sounding and lacks composition, beat, and/or structured melody. It uses textural layers of sound that can reward both passive and active listening and encourage a sense of calm or contemplation. The genre is said to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual", or "unobtrusive" quality. Nature soundscapes may be included, and the sounds of acoustic instruments such as the piano, strings and flute may be emulated through a synthesizer.
Jean Vigo was a French film director who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s. His work influenced French New Wave cinema of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Sergei Iosifovich Parajanov was a Soviet film director and screenwriter. He is regarded by film critics, film historians, and filmmakers to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
Artavazd Peleshyan is an Armenian director of essay films, a documentarian in the history of film art, a screenwriter, and a film theorist. He is renowned for developing a style of cinematographic perspective known as distance montage, combining perception of depth with oncoming entities, such as running packs of antelope or hordes of humans. Filmmaker Sergei Parajanov has referred to Peleshyan as "one of the few authentic geniuses in the world of cinema". Peleshyan was awarded the title of Merited Artist of the Armenian SSR in 1979, and Merited Artist of the Russian Federation in 1995.
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The Color of Pomegranates, originally known as Sayat-Nova, is a 1969 Soviet Armenian art film written and directed by Sergei Parajanov. The film is a poetic treatment of the life of 18th-century Armenian poet and troubadour Sayat-Nova. The film is now regarded as a landmark in film history, and was met with widespread acclaim among filmmakers and critics. It is often considered one of the greatest films ever made.
Mikhail Vartanov was a Soviet filmmaker and cinematographer who made significant contribution to world cinema with the documentary films Parajanov: The Last Spring and Seasons.
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Parajanov: The Last Spring is a 1992 award-winning documentary by the Russian-Armenian filmmaker Mikhail Vartanov, that also includes the complete surviving footage of Sergei Parajanov's unfinished last film The Confession, Vartanov's behind-the-scenes sequences of Parajanov at work on the shooting of the Color of Pomegranates and other material. Featured in 7th Annual Russian Academy of Cinema Arts Awards (1993).
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Nicolas Jaar is an American composer and musician. Among his notable works are the albums Space Is Only Noise (2011), Sirens (2016), and Cenizas (2020). He has also released two albums as one half of his band Darkside and two further albums under the alias Against All Logic.
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