Serj Tankian On His “Unplanned Pregnancy of a Record” & Creating Own iPad App (1)

Serj Tankian has had a busy 2012. He recorded and will release four solo albums this year, all of them in different genres. “You gotta do different things,” he tells us in an exclusive interview. "There are too many musicians making the same sh-t over and over again. It’s boring."

Of the four albums, Harakari is the one he spoke of most enthusiastically. “I did Harakari mostly because of the message." he says. "Because the music just came to me. It literally came to me from the universe, forcing itself upon me and leaving me with an unplanned pregnancy of a record."

He must have been enthusiastic to endure the intense video shoot for Harakari’s title track, which says was filmed “at the end of the f—cking earth,” in Saltan Sea, California. “There were dead fish all around,” he says. “The smell was indescribable using language. It was like 108 degrees, with no birds or fish living, and this complete decrepit community of meth users.” Sounds fun!

And to keep busy outside of recording and performing, he created his own iPad app, I Am Serj. "I got the iPad a couple of years ago,” he says. “And there are all these incredible music applications that have been coming out. I was so excited I created my own iPad app, utilizing the loops and stems from Harakari and my other solo albums. You could literally go make your own music using these loops.”

He sees great opportunity for other musicians to follow suit, and in doing so, maybe, just maybe bringing the music industry back from the brink of destruction. " 'Save the Music Industry,'" he adds, laughing. "That’s an interesting name for a book."