291: Mockroot, by Tigran Hamasyan

Tigran Hamasyan (Armenia)
Mockroot (2015)
12 tracks, 58 minutes
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It’s easy to describe Tigran Hamasyan’s music in a sentence and difficult to explain it at length. He is a jazz pianist, widely hailed as one of the greatest and most inventive players of his generation, who draws heavy influence from the music of his native Armenia as well as metal, electronica, prog and classical music. See, easy, right?

The tough bit is explaining why exactly it works so well. I’ve lots of jazz that incorporates music from the Middle East, and even lots of jazz specifically from the Caucasus, but none of it really comes close to the interconnectedness of style that Tigran Hamasyan achieves. What he creates is not jazz folk or folk jazz; it is something that is entirely both in an inseparable way. Fjoalzkz, you could say (I doubt you could say that).

The Armenian music that finds its way into Hamasyan’s style sounds incredibly ancient. He draws upon folk songs and church music and classical poetry that date back to the 9th century. Because the Armenian church was one of the very first organised Christian denominations (dating back even further to the 4th century), it is no surprise that the music it used in its worship and ceremony acts as a blueprint for many of the oldest Christian styles – and thus the classical music that descended from them – throughout Europe. When the beautiful, ornamented melodies from these Armenian traditions find a home within the ultra-extended harmonies and highly technical rhythms of contemporary jazz, all in one keyboard and the ten fingers of Hamasyan, they don’t sound like a collision of modern and ancient but instead like music that is both simultaneously.

That’s more than enough to wrap your head around during his solo piano pieces – such as the track ‘Lilac’ on this album (which also has more than a hint of Satie to it) or the entirety of his 2010 album A Fable – but on the rest of Mockroot he isn’t content with that. This is where the trio set-up comes in. Together with drums, bass and a load of synthesisers and other electronic effects (and a couple of guests too), this intricate, elegant jazz becomes the host for a very different monster. Crazy time signatures that overlap across various instrumental parts; basslines that wouldn’t be out-of-place in dubstep; 8-bit-style drum patches and synth runs; aggressive and irregular staccato chords and heavily compressed drum rhythms. The two closing tracks, ‘The Grid’ and ‘Out of the Grid’ are the ones you need to get this full-on mutant jazz vibe. I’m not the first to compare Hamasyan’s more out-there compositions to the extreme metal genre of djent, but that soundworld is so clear to me on pieces such as these. He even prepares his piano to get that classic metal palm-muting sound.

Even in combining traditional Armenian folk and religious music and jazz, Tigran Hamasyan creates something unique but with such a delicacy that keeps each style entirely intact. Then to bring in different styles that are in many ways antithetical to the gentleness of this fusion, to ramp it up to headbanging extremes and to still have each style involved upheld with equal integrity is an amazing feat of composition and performance from all involved. One of the greatest and most inventive players of his generation indeed. Simply stunning.