After five murderous albums with System of a Down, three solo albums and one vivid collaboration with Arto Tunçboyacıyan (Serart), the time has come for Jazz-iz Christ. This is an album I was really expected since Serj Tankian posted on his SoundCloud page the first track of this avant-garde/fusion project. This is not metal, although it has a few powerful guitar riffs, but it’s a nice melange of progressive rock, funk and jazz with several more or less exotic flavors.
Jazz-iz Christ is Serj’s brainchild, but truly is a collaborative effort between several musicians that Tankian curated to be part of the group and this self-titled album. Among others, there are considerable contributions from renowned pianist Tigran Hamasyan, flautist Valeri Tolstov, trumpet player Tom Duprey and additional performances from Stewart Copeland, actor/musician Davis Alpay and Vincent Pedulla. The 15 tracks that comprise Jazz-iz Christ, is mostly instrumental effort except for 4 tracks: “End of Time”, “Distant Thing”, “Song of Sand” and “Garuna”.
This is an exciting trip and a colorful amalgam of progressive jazz, electronic, ethnic and rock elements, a cool trip into the generous area of genderless avant-garde music with strong jazz roots and resonances.
This is quite a refreshing trip while most of the nowadays music is tasteless and boring, prefabricated and designed to be consumed once and as background noise exclusively. Tankian dare to take a bold and vivid journey outside his own – and our – comfort zone. Damn cool!
Track list:
01 Fish Don’t Scream
02 End of Time
03 Honeycharmed
04 Arpeggio Bust
05 Yerevan to Paris
06 Scotch in China
07 Distant Thing
08 Song of Sand
09 Garuna
10 Balcony Chats
11 Jinn
12 Waitomo Caves
13 Through Nights and Hopes
14 Papa Blue
15 Miso Soup
The self titled album will be released on July 23 worldwide on iTunes, Amazon and other popular digital distributors and will be available for sale in various limited deluxe physical formats through Tankian’s official website and the website for Serjical Strike Records.
Serj Tankian – Official Site
Serj Tankian @ SoundCloud
