The Barr Brothers - Sleeping Operator - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The opening song on The Barr Brothers' new album Queens of the Breakers starts with a drum pattern that mimics the sound of two heartbeats out of sync. It was written by Andrew Barr while holding the hand of a loved one in the hospital, where he heard two EKG machines beating slowly in and out of time with each other, occasionally aligning, but destined to dither. The album that follows represents a similar kind of human dynamic. It's The Barr Brothers' finest work yet, a collection of 11 hypnotically fluid songs that speak to the raw, elemental power of reflection, forgiveness, loss, and growing up. The record finds the band, featuring brothers Brad (guitar) and Andrew Barr (drums), and Sarah Page (harp), further on their thrilling path of exploring the outer limits of folk, blues, rock and Americana made north of the American border.

Leopold van der Pals was born to a Dutch father and a Danish mother in St. Petersburg and became a cosmopolitan who counted many of Europe's leading artistic personalities among his acquaintances and studied with Reinhold Glière in Berlin for a few months in 1907. Glière had just written his second symphony and presumably motivated his young pupil to compose his Symphony in F sharp minor, which was premiered with remarkable success by the Berlin Philharmonic. InchHe already has something to say; he has thoughts and ideas,Inch as the Signale für die musikalische Welt wrote at the time, and in fact more compositions followed, which - without a cramped quest for originality - represented the very best of modern music. Even then the theosophical movement showed van der Pals a path to follow in the future; it's German exponent Rudolf Steiner greatly impressed him, and when Steiner founded the Anthroposophical Society, he espoused this new idea in much of his creative work. His special relationship with nature and it's constant changes led to the composition of works such as the two symphonic sketches Frühling und Herbst op. 14 (Spring and Autumn). This highly atmospheric music of individual character situated between neoromanticism, impressionism, and the ecstatic poems of Alexander Scriabin displays the same remarkable organic power and instrumental mastery that also makes the poetic study of the soul in Wieland der Schmied op. 23 (Wieland the Smith) an absolutely fascinating listening experience.

2011 album from this Montreal-based quartet founded by brothers Brad and Andrew Barr, best known for their previous work as members of New England trio the Slip. A move to Montreal in 2004 eventually led to the formation of the new group, rounded out by harpist Sarah Page, and multi-instrumentalist Andres Vial, both Montreal natives. Recorded in their makeshift studio in an old boiler room at the foot of Mount Royal, the self-titled debut was written over the course of the brothers' time in a city full of strangers, lovers, old ghosts and new friends. It reads like a dusty journal of a traveler at the crossroads of good and evil. It's an opus of beautiful Folk, gut busting Blues and far-out African rhythm.