Serj Tankian’s various forays into art, be they painted, poetic or musical have always been rightly considered avant-garde, a bit out there, a little off the wall. It is what makes his output so fascinating and consistently rewarding to those with open minds. Perhaps the closest he has come to conventional was with his majestic Orca Symphony No. 1, but the majority of his work, be it with System Of A Down or his solo output has seen him restlessly ripping up convention with the results often being something astonishing. One gets the impression that Serj is an artist who must create, and he is impossible to pigeonhole such is the plethora of ventures, artistic and musical, that he has turned his hand to.
From rock to jazz to electronic to classical, Tankian’s own musical journey has taken in many stops and Disarming Time, his modern piano concerto (named after his first ever painting), might just be a summation of all those sojourns.
Beginning with a pretty nursery rhyme like melody of cascading arpeggio piano, Disarming Time has a deceptively simple start to a sonic expedition that is both breath-taking and moving. Within a minute, when the electro accompaniment sneaks in, it becomes apparent that this is not likely to be an archetypal piano concerto, but then with Serj Tankian at the wheel did you really think it would be? Grigorian like chanting takes hold of the melody and then at 2:10 the vocals surge into a sumptuous celestial noise that fills the ether. When the piano drops out the initial melody is dispensed with, leaving sparse voices trading with each other before piano returns with cello and violins to further stir the soul…and we are still only five minutes in.
The concerto swells and dissipates allowing the mind to create its own images before a solo female vocal heralds the taking of another turn with a duduk giving the music a hint of a geographical location, this was after all created with the Electric Yerevan protests of 2015 and the Armenian Velvet Revolution of 2018 in mind.
Tankian’s rock side is referenced when electric guitar and drums echo the piano line before Phillip Glass Mishima like synthesisers along with more vocal chanting shifts the concerto to another place entirely. Halfway through and the ideas, the array of sounds and melody lines have been quite dizzying.
When after 14 minutes an oud and the aforementioned duduk trade lines, it is an intensely beautiful evocation of the ancient lives of Near East ancestors, but the global nature of the music is further accentuated when Buddhist- like vocals provide an undercurrent to the over-laid Christian style chanting as Tankian melds contrasting religions, cultures and sounds into one coherent cornucopia concerto.
Disarming Time once more returns to the more formal idea of a piano concerto with accompanying strings until the denouement is signalled with a bouncing cacophony that segues into a sedate and stately string powered finale and the only disappointing aspect of Disarming Time; the fact that it ends.
There is an album’s worth of songs in this 24-minute piece, and it must be a wonderful space to be in to hear the sounds that Serj Tankian has floating around his head. Thankfully, he has decided to share them with us in the creation of this marvellously meditative concerto.
So put your headphones on, shut out the world, sit back and paint pictures in your mind.
18/06/21
The wonderful and equally moving full length video (with echoes of Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi) can be found here:
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