Photo by Callie Barlow

Earlier this year, Nicolas Jaar created an alternate soundtrack to the 1969 avant-garde Soviet film The Colour of Pomegranates, which was directed by Sergei Parajanov. Today, as a surprise, he shared a download of that soundtrack as a stand-alone album. Grab Pomegranates here.

The downloadable file includes the album, some artwork, and a lengthy note from Jaar detailing the album's origins. He explains that some of the music was created before he saw the film. "Garden of Eden", for example, was his soundtrack for a water bug he found in his living room. Some of it was intended for the A&E zombie show "The Returned", which he walked away from due to creative differences. "Survival" was originally intended for DJ Slugo's "Ghetto", and "Shame" is a rejected rap beat.

One of the file names is "I think ONE DAY THIS WILL COME OUT ON VINYL," and the label (below) indicates that it'll come via Jaar's Other People imprint. Another file notes that this version doesn't sync up with the film.

He writes:

At the beginning of 2015 my friend Milo heard some of these songs and told me about the film. I watched it and was dumbfounded. 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. The film gave me a structure to follow and themes to stick to.It gave clarity to this music that was made mostly out of and through chaos. It also gave me the balls to put it out... I wanted to do some screenings but the guy who owns the rights to the film only wants the original version of the movie out there. I can't blame him, I'm sure Paradjanov wouldn't want some kid in NY pissing all over his masterpiece and calling it a soundtrack! I've listened to it a couple of times without watching the movie and I think it stands on its own. Or at least I hope it can!

Jaar's latest 12", Nymphs III, is coming out on June 29 via Other People.

Pomegranates:

01 Garden of Eden

02 Construction

03 Pass the Time

04 Survival

05 The Fool and His Harem

06 Nothingness

07 Near Death

08 Beasts of This Earth

09 Fall Into Time

10 Folie à deux

11 Screams at the Edge of Dawn

12 Divorce

13 Three Windows

14 Tourists

15 Shame

16 Tower of Sin

17 Club Kapital

18 Volver

19 Spirit

20 Muse

Watch Nicolas Jaar on Pitchfork.tv's "+1":