System of a Down’s Serj Tankian has released a new 24-minute modern classical song along with an accompanying music video. The song is entitled “Disarming Time: A Modern Piano Concerto,” and is released on Tankian’s own Serjical Strike Records label. The music video was made by Tankian as well, using a lot of his own pictures and videos to accompany the music.

The music begins quite peacefully, reminisces of traditional Armenian composers such as Komitas. The gentle choir in the background is a nice touch. The intriguing and unique parts are perhaps the parts that become very modern – in that from classical piano the song can suddenly jump to a more soothing techno vibe with electronic music and then jump right back to classical piano again. It’s not just something modern like techno, it can jump to what appears like traditional string instruments as well, but all of it runs so smoothly that you don’t really notice it’s the same song.

“When quarantine hit and all our projects and releases were cancelled, I started itching for a musical challenge. One night sitting in bed looking through different voice memos on the iPhone, I realized I have this huge trove of short, special, unrealized musical ideas. Right then the thought of creating an epic piece utilizing them all made me smile. So I recorded them all and started arranging the instrumentation to create this incredibly unique musical experience. I mean, who the fuck listens to 24 minutes of music as one piece today? We’re about to find out!” Stated Serj Tankian.

Tankian has been working on composing music for film, TV and video games, both for independent and big studio production teams. “Disarming Time: A Modern Piano Concerto” will be released as part of the Cool Gardens Poetry Suite. The suite will be composed of four cinematic works layered with Tankian reciting his poetry from his book of poems, Cool Gardens. The suite is to have 87 poems over 48 minutes of music, and the poetry will hit on a variety of topics.

Tankian has been very busy this year, releasing a recent song (along with music video), “How Many Times.” Tankian, along with many other artist have called on musicians to boycott Israel due to Israel’s aggression towards Gaza. He has released another song entitled “Rumi” – a homage to his son and the 13th Century Iranian poet. Tankian also releasing a song against the aggression of the Azerbaijani government on the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Photo Credit: Mauricio Alvarado.