Can you marry classical music with electronica? That's the bet George Sarah has made for quite some time. I read that since 1985, he has regularly been commissioned by film and TV companies to compose scores for them, and I am not at all surprised after listening to his set at Amoeba on Sunday afternoon. His instrumentals or pieces with vocalist, which were mixing a classic-style violin-cello string section with electronic, synth, and sometimes a guitar or a bass, are truly cinematic. Did I mention that Sarah was previously in the trip hop LA band T.H.C. and was a hard dance music producer? It totally makes sense.
Sarah was providing the electro beats on all the tracks, while the emotion was coming mostly from the cello, and it was as if the synth rhythm section was clashing with the slow and solemn sound of the string instruments, but both were eventually moving together beautifully.
His style of electronic chamber music is quite unique, but sounds automatically familiar as, according to his facebook biblio, he has scored 31 episodes for television, composed music for the ceremonies at the 2008 summer Olympic Games in Beijing, his songs have been featured on the CBS shows CSI, CSI NY, Paul Haggis’s Family Law, the Oprah Winfrey show, HBO’s ‘Addiction’, PBS’ ‘History Detectives’, Chris Rock's 'Everybody hates Chris', WB’s ‘Everwood’, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’,…he has released 8 full-length albums and his music has appeared on over 40 compilations, his resume is pretty much endless!
And, while they were playing certain tracks, it was as if the images were missing, since this stuff definitively requires stories and background and sounds a little blank alone, but if you were able to make up some scenario in your head, it would have involved some complicated intrigue and heavy human drama.
Sarah took the guitar on a song, without stopping the beats, and eventually used a bass on another track, the synth was sometimes producing a string-like sound echoing the real strings, and there were even some funky-ish beats on the last instrumental, which was showing up more action and passion that the previous ones.
Gingger Shankar joined the quartet to do the vocals on ‘Anna’ a melancholic and haunting track which features Wild Colonials’ Angela McCluskey and The Pogues’ James Fearnley on accordion on the album.
Bauhaus’ David J and his coolness also came to sing the vocals on the only other singing song, ‘Spalding Gray Can’t Swim’, a strange slow burn with deep strings and David ‘s unique and sinister tone.
George Sarah was actually celebrating the release of this new album, ‘Who Sleep The Sleep Of Peace’, and he has declared this to describe the songs: ‘[they] are about closure or an end with those people and things who will never leave you. The irony of loss whether intentional or not, yet somehow they have shaped your world view in a profound way. A dying without the death in a optimistic way’.
Let’s see, there is a sleeping (dead?) nun on the cover, I read he is a fervent catholic, he performs sometimes in churches, he wrote a score for silent film, 'The Passion of Joan of Arc’, so is he talking about some eternal life concept there?
