George Sarah

You may not know the name George Sarah, but chances are good that you’ve heard his music. In his thirteen years as a professional electronic composer and multi-instrumentalist, Sarah’s music has been featured everywhere from CSI to the Beijing Olympics. Sarah has eight full length releases to his credit, and his music has appeared on over 40 compilations. He’s performed at UCLA’s Royce Hall, The Getty Museum, and Grand Performances, appearing with a diverse group of artists ranging from Bebel Gilberto to Goldfrapp (performing his original compositions from a bank of synthesizers alongside live string section, bridging the normally discrete musical worlds of electronic and classical.) His old band THC even appeared on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. George Sarah, it seems, gets around.

With the release of Who Sleep The Sleep Of Peace, Sarah collects the best of his recent work into an album that will captivate listeners from beginning to end. From the opening track “Anna” (which features singer Angela McCluskey from Wild Colonials and The Pogues’ James Fearnley on accordion, and which Buzzbands.la called “hauntingly beautiful,) Sarah takes us on a sonic journey through a world where stuttering, glitch breaks flit underneath yearning cellos, Tropicalia is reinterpreted for an 8-bit reality, and a beat boxing robot with blown speakers gets a warm hug from an elegant string section.

With an epically busy schedule of film and TV work, it’s hard to imagine Sarah finding the time to craft a record of his own music. Yet in this case effort begets effort, as for Sarah “a long stint on a project will get me inspired to write personal songs. I think when I’m in the habit of recording all day it’s hard to stop. I scored 28 episodes for the Discovery network in an 18 month period and when I was done I wrote a ton of material.”

Sarah’s deep rolodex came in handy when he realized that while most of the songs on Who Sleep The Sleep Of Peace are instrumental, there were a few that needed a voice. “Emo” features the vocalists Monique Powell from the band Save Ferris. Says Sarah “I had a concert at the Getty Museum and the curator asked me if I was open to collaborating with singers and they thought Monique’s voice would work well with my music. With David J (Bauhaus, Love n’ Rockets) I co-wrote a song for his latest solo album so he most graciously has appeared on the track “Spalding Gray Can’t Swim.” Swayzak, who’s collaboration “Drag Ass” closes the record, have known Sarah for years, and they’ve appeared on each other’s records.

Despite the host of guests and the lengthy intervals in which the songs were written and recorded the record plays as a cohesive whole, and when finish leaves the listener deeply satisfied. As for an overall theme, Sarah says “the songs on this album 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.” A dying without death? Seems almost as paradoxical as the idea of electronic chamber music. Who Sleep The Sleep Of Peace firmly demonstrates that George Sarah has the latter sorted. As for the former, well, we’ll have to keep you posted.