Nicolas Jaar Releases Free Album Pomegranates
Photo by Callie Barlow
Earlier this year, Nicolas Jaar created an alternate soundtrack to the 1969 avant-garde Soviet film The Colour of Pomegranates, which was directed by Sergei Parajanov. Today, as a surprise, he shared a download of that soundtrack as a stand-alone album. Grab Pomegranates here.
If you’re at a computer, here’s a DL for my album “Pomegranates” http://t.co/5HtoSw0gKF
— Nicolas Jaar (@nicolas___jaar) June 24, 2015
The downloadable file includes the album, some artwork, and a lengthy note from Jaar detailing the album’s origins. He explains that some of the music was created before he saw the film. “Garden of Eden”, for example, was his soundtrack for a water bug he found in his living room. Some of it was intended for the A&E zombie show “The Returned”, which he walked away from due to creative differences. “Survival” was originally intended for DJ Slugo’s “Ghetto”, and “Shame” is a rejected rap beat.
One of the file names is “I think ONE DAY THIS WILL COME OUT ON VINYL,” and the label (below) indicates that it’ll come via Jaar’s Other People imprint. Another file notes that this version doesn’t sync up with the film.
He writes:
At the beginning of 2015 my friend Milo heard some of these songs and told me about the film. I watched it and was dumbfounded. 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.
The film gave me a structure to follow and themes to stick to.It gave clarity to this music that was made mostly out of and through chaos. It also gave me the balls to put it out… I wanted to do some screenings but the guy who owns the rights to the film only wants the original version of the movie out there. I can’t blame him, I’m sure Paradjanov wouldn’t want some kid in NY pissing all over his masterpiece and calling it a soundtrack! I’ve listened to it a couple of times without watching the movie and I think it stands on its own. Or at least I hope it can!
Jaar’s latest 12″, Nymphs III, is coming out on June 29 via Other People.
Pomegranates:
01 Garden of Eden
02 Construction
03 Pass the Time
04 Survival
05 The Fool and His Harem
06 Nothingness
07 Near Death
08 Beasts of This Earth
09 Fall Into Time
10 Folie à deux
11 Screams at the Edge of Dawn
12 Divorce
13 Three Windows
14 Tourists
15 Shame
16 Tower of Sin
17 Club Kapital
18 Volver
19 Spirit
20 Muse
Watch Nicolas Jaar on Pitchfork.tv’s “+1″:
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