System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian has released a 24-minute instrumental titled ‘Disarming Time: A Modern Piano Concerto’ via his own label, Serjical Strike Records. The piece, which is part of a classical composition Tankian worked on during the pandemic, comes with a self-produced video. Watch it below.
“When quarantine hit and all our projects and releases were canceled, I started itching for a musical challenge,” Tankian explained in a statement (via Blabbermouth). “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.”
A version of ‘Disarming Time: A Modern Piano Concerto’ will be released as part of Tankian’s upcoming Cool Gardens Poetry Suite, a collection of classical compositions over which Tankian recites poems from first published book of poetry, Cool Gardens. The video for the previously released ‘Cinematic Piano Theme (With Poetry)’, directed by David Bradford, is also available now and can be found below.
Last year, Tankian released his solo EP Elasticity. Back in November, System of a Down returned with their first new music in 15 years, ‘Protect the Land’ and ‘Genocidal Humanoidz’.
