George Sarah: Music for Electronica Part Two

By: Abbie Bernstein
Date: Monday, December 02, 2002

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER fans were delighted earlier this year when series regular Anthony Stewart Head teamed with composer/musician George Sarah to created the album MUSIC FOR ELEVATORS. CINESCAPE recently sat down with Sarah to discuss his work in electronica, and his collaboration with Anthony Stewart Head.

Recording on

the album began in September of 2000. "It took about 11 months," he says. "It was a new experience, in the sense that I worked alone, always, and this time not only did I work with Tony, but we also brought in all these friends and different musicians, guest vocalists. There were other people who contributed to this record."

One of the guest artists was Helen Shingler, Anthony Stewart Head's mother, who posthumously contributed the instrumental track entitled "Mum's Song." "It was something that Tony's father recorded - Tony's mom playing piano, with a Walkman or something," Sarah explains, "and [it] captured the elegance of this woman just playing in her living room or wherever it was without her knowing about it. The charm about that piece to me is that it sounds like it comes from another place and another time and it is. It's like a soundtrack to a dream sequence or a memory."

Sarah and Head each play a number of different instruments on MUSIC. There's a lot of trading throughout, with Sarah at various points playing synth, piano, beats, Wurlitzer, analogs, guitar, bass, strings and bells, while Head plays piano, guitar, bass guitar, synthesizer, casio, sitar, beats, organ and Wurlitzer. How did the duo determine who would play what on which track? Sarah laughs: "Where we just happened to be sitting that day. Truly. The most important thing was just having a good time. A lot of what we're doing with this record, I would encourage Tony to play a few bars and I'd sample [electronically repeat] them. You have a verse that repeats itself and then you add things on top of it and I'll play two bars of a guitar riff, you sample the last two bars, and then you loop it."

Now 33,

Sarah was born in Korea. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was six, right about the time he became a rock aficionado. "I heard Elton John and Paul McCartney's VENUS AND MARS, and that's all I could think about. I couldn't wait to get home to listen to those records. To this day, I still buy a lot of albums, maybe three or four a week."

When Sarah was 12, he persuaded his parents to gift him with an electric bass guitar for his birthday. "That's when all the New Wave/punk thing happened, so I was really into Gary Numan and Kraftwerk and Bowie and the Jam, Joy Division, Cocteau Twins. And then when I was about 17, I started experimenting with keyboards. I was driving, so I was able to go to clubs a lot, and the music you heard at the clubs were the early New Order records and Cabaret Voltaire, Kraftwerk and Bowie. I really had an interest in that, and the fusing of the two putting electronic elements with the post-punk sound."

Although Sarah loves all styles of music, he has become especially drawn to and known for electronica, which he feels is an under-appreciated genre. "Electronic music doesn't pigeonhole to anything, there's this unpredictability about [it]. It's strange how electronic music threatens a lot of people, too. That's the thing that I find most ironic about it. A lot of music purists seem to really get nervous about it. And I like that, because when I was 11 and 12, the Sex Pistols were doing that. The Jam were doing that. They were really shaking shit up. It's like, Claude Monet got kicked out of art school. People were like, 'That's not painting, that's blurred.' It's something new and people [think], 'It's challenging and we can't deal with it.' When I tell people I do electronic music, sometimes I get a real disappointment, like, 'Oh, God.'"

The disappointment,

Sarah believes, may stem from incomprehension. "I think the thing about electronic music that intimidates people is that most people don't know how it's being done. When you hear a rock band by now everyone has picked up a guitar or a bass or had a drum kit at some point in their lives, but [not everyone has] sat and bought Pro Tools," he laughs. "Electronic music is an empty canvas you can do beatless ambience stuff that's pseudo-classical or you can do stuff that has a stronger structure, or you can do stuff that's more hip-hop based. That's what I like about it the endless possibilities."

Computer technology doesn't cancel out the use of real instruments, Sarah explains. "Actually, I do all my writing on a grand piano. I write [at the piano], and then I take what I've been working on and put some string arrangements to it, put some beats, rhythms underneath it, just start layering. It's like a stroke of a brush. There's no one dominating thing that rides throughout. It's like an ensemble. There's no lead actor in electronic music, it's always a Woody Allen movie one of the good ones," he laughs. "It's like MANHATTAN."

Be sure to check back soon for the conclusion of CINESCAPE's chat with George Sarah.

Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think at feedback@cinescape.com.