Tigran Hamasyan - Jazz +world music +meshuggah +fempop

Yes, I think it's substantially better than Mockroot, though I'm probably in a tiny minority. I think his best albums are Shadow Theater, Luys I Luso and Red Hail in that order. Just listen to the whole album. There are a couple (Nor Tsaghik and Voghormea inds Astvats) that have more in common with the clonky stuff on his last couple albums, but most of it is much richer and more subtle. It's a bit less straightforward than "Holy" from Shadow Theater, but if you like that you will probably love this.

 

Listen to all of Red Hail and Shadow Theater immediately!!!

Mockroot is not BAD, but it seems so thin compared to those two albums. There are many songs that just simply have the same poundy "riffs" repeated over and over and over.

I need to listen to this new one!

PS: For anyone that reads music AT ALL, check out this! This is the most insane transcription job I've ever seen. Make sure you actually follow the link to youtube, the embedded version is way too small to read.



It's a full transcription of the crazy live version of "what the waves brought." (The original is on A Fable and is not nearly this long or complex.) I love the long sustained sections of septuplets. I don't get how the hell he can play this. The beat boxing is also ridiculous rhythmically with what else is going on, though I don't know if he was thinking so hard about the rhythms of it.

 

PS - here's another great Tigran heavy/proggy song that I only somewhat recently discovered, it was on Ari Hoenig's album but has Tigran playing on it and was very obviously written by him.



This album is quite good, by the way. It has an extremely technical young group blowing through a lot of standards. It's very entertaining hearing flashy young speedsters like this playing that kind of music. This one might be the funniest, just listen to the dueling piano/guitar lines. They're not really exchanging bars, it's more just they're both soloing at all times while listening to each other. It turns into near-complete chaos right before the drum solo (~2:45)

 

It's probably like A Fable, then. I have listened to that several times, but it mainly functions as background music, with a couple really great tracks. They're mostly all really short. The live versions of them tended to be far longer and go more places. For a great example, see the link above for What the Waves Brought compared to the studio version. I'm hoping his next album is in the vein of Red Hail/Shadow Theater. He seems to alternate intricately written & densely layered album with small thin album, and I guess it's now time for a big album again (Red Hail/A Fable/Shadow Theater/Mockroot/Luys i Luso/this).

 

It's just an EP of unused stuff from An Ancient Observer. Meh. We need another densely written one ASAP!!

 

He has a new album coming out in August, and I just looked at the track listing and saw one song is featuring Tosin Abasi!!!