Pomegranates (album)

Pomengranates was produced as an unofficial alternative soundtrack to the 1969 Soviet Armenian film The Colour of Pomegranates, which was directed by Sergei Parajanov.[1][2] Jaar first watched the film in 2015, at a friend's suggestion.[3] By this time, he had already composed some of the songs that would later appear on the album.[3] In a note accompanying the released album, Jaar wrote that he was "dumbfounded" by his first viewing of the film:[3]

"I felt the aesthetic made complete sense with the strange themes I had been obsessed with over the past couple of years... I was curious to see what my songs sounded like when synced with the images, which turned into a 2-day bender where I soundtracked the entire film, creating a weird collage of the ambient music I had made over the last 2 years."[3]

Jaar described the record as an "extremely personal" one, while also stating that, with Pomegranates, he had "failed at doing the kind of ambient record [he] really wanted to do."[4]

Mark Richardson, writing for Pitchfork, wrote that "there are long stretches, particularly in the early going, where it's more of a sound piece than what is usually described as 'music', but the album's second half contains some of Jaar's loveliest tunes."[2] Sasha Geffen, writing for Consequence of Sound, said that given its length, "Pomegranates doesn't always feel like an album or a soundtrack so much as it feels like an experiment in sculpting time."[5]

A screening of The Colour of Pomegranates featuring a live performance of Jaar's alternative soundtrack was originally advertised for 22 February 2017, at the Cinefamily in Los Angeles, California.[6] However, this performance was replaced with the film's original soundtrack, due to objections from the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute and The Film Foundation that the live performance would not present the film as Parajanov intended it.[7]