LOVE by Cirque Du Soleil (CD, Nov-2006, Capitol/EMI Records)

For a band where all 4 members played their last collective note decades ago, the Beatles' "Love" is a pure masterpiece. It belongs right up there with Sgt. Pepper as a work of exploratory genius. While no track is held as sacred in the mix, every note is a diamond. Love is a beautiful hallucination that you will remember and cherish.

The Beatles were known for experimenting with sound. Some of the modern day effects processors such as the "flanger" used today were invented specifically for a Beatles record. Whether it was a string section or a sitar player flown in from halfway around the world, the Beatles had every thing they asked for to make great music. It was George Martin who brought it all together and made it work.

Years after their break up, their recorded work began to be weighed down with nostalgia, marketers stripping their legacy for spare parts, gutting their vital work for greatest hits CD's and sneaker commercials.

George Martin was reduced to spend his remaining years rehashing the same stories over and over for countless books and dvds like a forgotten museum curator or a bored librarian.

Love changes all of that.

George and Giles Martin break into the Beatles museum, perform a musical séance and resurrect a rock band to change the music world one last time. They open the cage doors wide and let the songs run wild, thawing every note that's been frozen in our minds. The Martins turn our old Beatles upside down and set them (and us) free in the process.

Nothing is where it "should" be; shooting us through the rabbit hole before we have a chance to change our minds.

Welcome to the Beatles' Fun House.

Just when there's a lull, mischievous Beatles leap from behind corners to scream "Help". Relax too much, and John Lennon jumps out screaming to start Revolution. Unpredictable, reckless, dangerous- how's that for a Beatles record?

Martin keeps you off balance the way a great record should. You're not falling asleep to this record. One minute later, the floor will drop. There's no sentimental fluff here.

Don't skip tracks. Listen to it in one setting. Don't bother previewing snippets. It's a waste of time. Telling you what happens in all 26 songs is like spoiling the cliffhanger of a movie. Every song has a purpose to the CD. There is perfect pacing.

Have you heard rare Beatles tracks before? Memorized all the Mark Lewisohn studio diaries that tracked every recording they made? Then little new material will surprise you. But you will hear the Beatles in a way you never have.

To call it a "mash up" is to cheapen it. Mash ups usually include more than one band and from different genres.

It's not a remix. It's a reconstruction from the person who helped build it in the first place.

The sound quality is ridiculously good. Every note sounds new. This is a living and breathing CD. It's not a greatest hits; but you will be sorry when it's over.

We are meeting the Beatles in a new way. George Harrison sounds beautiful in a way I might not have known. John Lennon's voice is a revelation. Paul McCartney's bass is perfect. Ringo Starr's drums sound incredible.

Every sound you hear is a high point flashing by in seconds.

Some highlights:

John Lennon shares parts of Tomorrow Never Knows with George Harrison's Within You Without You.

The Martins mix the hard edge of I Want You with Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite.

George Martin may have lost some of his hea

If you care about the Beatles at all, you must go and buy the LOVE CD. Don't download it (you can't legally, anyway) because you need the full fidelity of the recording. Don't rip it to your iPod, either. Listen to it with the best headphones you can find and prepare to hear the songs you thought you knew for the first time. Every track is a revelation: from guitar licks on I Wanna Hold Your Hand that previously drowned in AM-radio-friendly compression, to a neat little whacka-chicka whacka-chicka (think the theme from Shaft by Isaac Hayes) guitar riff I couldn't detect before on Get Back, to the faint but distinct sound of the creaking springs of an office chair over the most famously long piano chord in history at the end of A Day in the Life.

There are also the mash-ups Beatles producer George Martin and his son did as they put this album together to provide the soundtrack to Cirque du Soleil's LOVE show in Vegas. They're nice, inspired at times, but that's not what stays with you (OK, the sharp transition from Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite to She's So Heavy really grabs you by the throat). What resonates is the recordings themselves, how clean they sound, so clean that you are sure that they've been redone by new musicians, but they're the original recordings by J, P, G, and R.

Which leads me to just want more. Much more. I want to see the whole catalogue redone, and I know I'm not the first to say so about the generally weak Parlophone CDs. But now we have the proof that we won't really know the full genius of the Beatles until we can finally hear what they heard in the studio.

As a long time Beatles lover, who could resist another opportunity to buy yet another Beatles album? This, however, is a whole new ball of wax.

I saw the live show, LOVE, in Las Vegas and it simply blew me away. The music mix of the Beatles by Giles Martin (son of George Martin fame) combined with the absolutely stunning theater of Cirque du Soleil was a lifetime highlight.
The high fidelity of the live recorded score is a breathtaking experience. It was a completely surprising take on the Beatles music which was at once compelling and reinvention of an already monumental musical contribution.

The CD recording can't possibly replicate the theater experience and I assume the DVD dobly 5.1 sound is superior. Also, without the action of the theater, the musical scenes feel a bit segmented. However, my overall rating of this recording is superb and an invaluable contribution to the existing phenomenal Beatle catalogue.

For those interested, there is an excellent interview with Giles Martin and Bob Boilen of NPR which is posted on the NPR.org website under the All Songs Considered archive. VERY interesting story of the genesis and sampling of this recording.

DN

I have owned Beatles albums many times over. From Vinyl to CDs, listened to them on various types of devices and know, if not all of the songs at least the great majority of them. This CD does a great job of mixing all the well loved songs superbly and throwing in some versions that are rarely heard or known. At first I was casually listening to the tracks and I began to pickup on little tidbits here and there and found myself discovering things I have never heard before. Guitar licks were never that clear before, the smooth sound of the bass being played by Paul on Come Together and the mixing of tracks really make this album stand out. Definitely an album that should be in every Beatles collection.

First of all, you must understand that this is not a greatest hits CD. This is not "One". This is a creative collaboration, a hodgepodge of songs arranged as a back drop for Cirque du Soleil. The wonderful tunes are all there along with some sound clips. But, they are in a random order so you go from the psychedelic "I am the Walrus" to simplistic "I Want to Hold Your Hand" without so much as a "How Do You Do?" This is like a daydream, snippets of "Beatledom" combined in a wonderful and fabulous free association of melodies. This is the essence of The Beatles.