One of the few authentically original 21st century jazz phenomena, the award-winning Armenian-born pianist-composer known simply as Tigran has, over the last decade, conjured up an ancient-to-future soundworld with a genuine air of mystique. But even geniuses have off-days.

The new album The Bird of a Thousand Voices, that follows the contrastingly outside-the-box jazz standard album Standart in 2022, is a blip in the context of his consistently exceptional work. The 37-year-old LA-based keyboardist-composer has this time gone full-on prog rock, conceptually at least, with an ambitious multi-media presentation of which this is the musical part. The inspiration is a mythic Armenian folk tale ‘Hazaran Bibul’. “On a quest for a divine bird and its immortal song Prince Areg finds himself on a path of no return…” goes the introductory narrative.

It's a work of epic proportions with a prog/nu-metal wet-dream 24 tracks and titles Lord of the Rings fans might die for. Tigran on various synths, electric/acoustic keys and his trio fuse hammering nu-prog/metal-influenced riffs to irregular post-hiphop meters with an ethereal choir-like ambience and ancient Armenian folk-injected melody that's occasionally augmented by sometime collaborator/fellow ECM-label compatriot/vocalist Areni Agbabian.

Indeed, it's entirely characteristic of his work, yet the project's motivic, overlong programmatic approach – it's worth noting that it's also a soundtrack to a new video game – might be the reason why it lacks subtlety and is pretty relentless on the ears. It's missing some of the more hip, flexible jazz ensemble interaction heard in his previous outstanding recordings Shadow Theater and the more recent The Call Within. A ‘live’ transmedia audio-visual presentation of the music planned for November's EFG London Jazz Festival could and should put the standalone music here in an entirely different, more positive artistic light.