Tigran Hamasyan’s Manifeste is not an easy listen, but it is an immediately captivating one. Prelude For All Seekers is a staggering introduction, with a blur of lightning-fast piano runs and clattering, hyper-detailed percussion, the interplay between piano and drums mirrored with microscopic precision with an insistent groove that keeps the whole thing tethered as it threatens to spiral into abstraction.

What follows is a record of immense range and ambition. Hamasyan’s piano work frequently evokes the discipline and dexterity of classical performance but it’s constantly destabilised by off-kilter phrasing and unexpected harmonic turns, with a jazz-fusion sensibility that refuses to settle. Ultradance is a perfect encapsulation, built on increasingly warped layers of polyrhythm that feel both structured and completely unmoored at the same time. Wartime Poem veers into towering guitar passages that recall the scale and drama of classic progressive rock while Years Passing - For Akram is a stripped back moment of pure beauty as a delicate piano piece is adorned with subtle trumpet flourishes. The title track Manifeste introduces vocal elements that feel ancient and incantatory, and pieces like One Body, One Blood and Window From One Heart To Another - For Rumi lean into an overtly folkloric space, using choral textures and sparse arrangements to evoke timelessness and deep roots, providing a necessary conterbalance to the album’s more technically manic passages. Across its 72-minute runtime the album shifts constantly between extremes, from mournful and cinematic to the hyper-technical. Challenging and dazzling, Manifeste is a vast and intricate tapestry of jazz, Armenian folk, progressive rock, and complex rhythms colliding in fascinating ways.