A Novel Approach
By Hae Jung Shin
March 15, 2006 9:00 p.m.
Most books are formatted and printed in much the same way. The
Books, on the other hand, have a more unorthodox approach.
This week, The Books will bring their eccentric three-month,
North American tour to two consecutive concerts in the Harold M.
Williams Auditorium at the J. Paul Getty Museum on March 17 and 18.
The event, titled “Laughtears and Livewires,” will also
feature the band Califone.
With performances scheduled everywhere from The Andy Warhol
Museum in Pittsburgh to The Ladies Literary Club in Grand Rapids,
The Books have been entertaining themselves across the country by
playing shows, listening to cassettes, shopping at thrift stores,
and taking what band member Paul de Jong refers to as “crazy
monster drives.”
The New York-based band is comprised of de Jong, a 41-year-old
Dutch classical cellist, and 30-year-old music-sample mastermind
and guitarist Nick Zammuto. The duo, who met in 1999 over a shared
apartment building and a Shoobie Taylor record, quickly discovered
their mutual interest in collecting samples and discovering what
the band refers to as “found sound.”
In 2000, de Jong and Zammuto officially formed The Books and
started synthesizing samples with instrumentation and vocals to
create their own distinctive sound: an amalgamation of acoustic
compositions, sampled beats, sound clips and overheard
conversations. Afterward, de Jong and Zammuto released their debut
album “Thought For Food” in 2002 and “The Lemon
of Pink” in 2003, both of which received critical acclaim.
After half a decade of production and a few sprinkled performances,
their latest album, “Lost and Safe,” has launched their
first official national tour, with over 40 scheduled tour
dates.
Because their two previous albums focused more on collaborating
previous sounds, rather than emphasizing their own performances,
“Lost and Safe” directs more attention to de Jong and
Zammuto’s instrumentation, creating an overall sound more
conducive to live performance. After previously running into
problems with trying to retune every song from “Thought For
Food” in order to play efficiently, “Lost and
Safe” features tighter and more continuous instrumental
sections, making it easier to orchestrate.
“A lot of our previous music is not really effective for
performance and, when played (live), there are things that we take
out and things that we stick in instead, making them recognizable
but with a character of (their) own. The majority of our set list
for this current tour is from “˜Lost and Safe,'”
de Jong said.
Due to the unique style of their music, in which several layers
of detailed and nuanced sound clips and samples transition into one
cohesive sound, the band has had considerable difficulty adjusting
and restructuring its music to be suitable for live
performances.
“It took us so long to even play live at all,” de
Jong said. “It was very difficult to translate our studio
music to the stage without making it just about going on stage and
pushing a button or two. We had to learn to play our own music and
really instrumentalize and re-orchestrate a big part of our
compositions in order to make songs that are actually interesting
to listen to and to play.”
With just de Jong and Zammuto sharing the stage, de Jong plays
the cello, Zammuto plays guitar, and the two have access to a
mixing board center stage and a DVD player that projects an
accompanying video onto a screen backdrop, creating a multimedia
performance.
“The videos are very similar to what we do in the
music,” de Jong said. “They are a mixture of original
and found material ““ photography, texts, home videos and
about 25 years’ worth of VHS. With that and what we find,
there are endless possibilities.”
With music that strays far from the ordinary and a video montage
that is integral to the performance, the tour perpetuates the
idiosyncratic and artistic facet of the music by intentionally
refusing popular venues and large music clubs in exchange for art
museums and poetry lounges.
“We were hoping for unconventional spaces because we
don’t really think that our music really has anything to do
with the culture of hanging around and drinking alcohol,” de
Jong said. “This way, we are able to get a really particular
audience that we enjoy.
“It’s not that we don’t particularly enjoy
playing in those venues, but it’s just that it doesn’t
always do that much justice to our audience or to our show,”
he added.
Beyond The Books’ albums, their first tour will enable
them to showcase different material not necessarily limited to
their usual repertoire.
De Jong promises a couple of new pieces, particularly the
band’s soundtrack for a friend’s documentary about the
Biosphere II experiment of the early 1990s.
“Our friend went out and made a film about this giant
greenhouse in Arizona where a bunch of scientists tried to subsist
for about two years, and we decided to make a few songs for
that,” de Jong said.
One final benefit of the tour is that they can apply their style
to the works of other artists.
“We’re going to be playing a song that, for once, is
not necessarily our own,” de Jong said. “I’m not
going to tell you what it is but you should be pleasantly
surprised!”
