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Pomegranates (album)

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Pomegranates
Studio album by
ReleasedJune 24, 2015[1]
GenreElectronic, experimental
Length75:15
LabelOther People
Nicolás Jaar chronology
Space Is Only Noise
(2011)
Pomegranates
(2015)
Sirens
(2016)

Pomegranates is a 2015 album by Chilean-American composer Nicolas Jaar, intended as an unofficial alternative soundtrack to the 1969 Soviet Armenian film The Colour of Pomegranates.[1][2]

Production

[edit]

Pomengranates was produced as an unofficial alternative soundtrack to the 1969 Soviet Armenian film The Colour 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]

Track listing

[edit]
No.TitleLength
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

Reception

[edit]
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Consequence of SoundB[5]
Pitchfork7.6/10[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 Colour 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]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c Evan Minsker (24 June 2015). "Nicolas Jaar Releases Free Album Pomegranates". Pitchfork Media. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d Mark Richardson (8 July 2015). "Nicolás Jaar Pomegranates". Pitchfork. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  3. ^ a b c d Medved, Matt (2015-06-25). "Nicolas Jaar Drops Surprise Album 'Pomegranates'". Billboard. Archived from the original on 2020-06-12. Retrieved 2021-07-31.
  4. ^ Walls, Seth Colter (2016-09-30). "Nicolas Jaar: 'The only thing I was excited about was, can electronic music be political?'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2016-10-03. Retrieved 2021-07-30.
  5. ^ a b Sasha Geffen (1 July 2015). "Nicolas Jaar – Pomegranates". Consequence of Sound. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  6. ^ "The Color of Pomegranates w/ original score by Nicolas Jaar at Cinefamily, Los Angeles (2017) ⟋ RA". Resident Advisor. 2017. Archived from the original on 2021-07-30. Retrieved 2021-07-30.
  7. ^ Parajanov-Vartanov Institute. "News". Parajanov-Vartanov Institute. Archived from the original on 2021-07-30. Retrieved 2021-07-31.