- Playing
- Interview with The Books
- From
- Laura Kwerel
Less a band than an experiment in sound, The Books create an emotional collage of music, found sound, and documentary. Much of their work is stitched together from recordings that seem strangely familiar--old television shows, home movies, outdoor sounds-- making their songs feel like a nostalgic trip through our own memories.
This year, the duo, composed of Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong, are finally coming out of the studio for a nation-wide tour. Their first stop was at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, where I caught up with them before their sold-out show.
Here's a small excerpt from the interview:
"There is not a particular sound that I get drawn to; there is beauty in almost every sound. I started collecting sounds when I got my first record player...my parents gave me a box of records, kind of the leftovers of the entire family. There were medical recordings, because my father was a medical doctor, so there were heartbeat recordings, and what always made the strongest impression on me were these tiny moments that were jam-packed with human characteristics."
(Paul de Jong)
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Piece Description
Less a band than an experiment in sound, The Books create an emotional collage of music, found sound, and documentary. Much of their work is stitched together from recordings that seem strangely familiar--old television shows, home movies, outdoor sounds-- making their songs feel like a nostalgic trip through our own memories. This year, the duo, composed of Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong, are finally coming out of the studio for a nation-wide tour. Their first stop was at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, where I caught up with them before their sold-out show. Here's a small excerpt from the interview: "There is not a particular sound that I get drawn to; there is beauty in almost every sound. I started collecting sounds when I got my first record player...my parents gave me a box of records, kind of the leftovers of the entire family. There were medical recordings, because my father was a medical doctor, so there were heartbeat recordings, and what always made the strongest impression on me were these tiny moments that were jam-packed with human characteristics." (Paul de Jong)
2 Comments
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Review of Interview with The BooksThis is exactly the kind of music-profile I wish NPR et al. would do more of. Too often a piece meant to highlight a band or a new album is produced in the same way...a "critic" walks us through the albums up and downs arriving at a kind of final "thesis". It feels like they are hustling product. Now...sometimes that style does work but... ...lets examine what we have here--a kind of neutral play-space were the listener can learn some history about the band, hear their sound and also go a step further by hearing band members phrase things in their own words. This feature would be a slam dunk for not only national programming but virtually any local culture or music show. Plus, it's The Books, these guys are just perfect for radio. Their creative process involves collecting and assembling bits of sound. In their words, "these tiny moments are just jam-packed with human characteristics and memories". C'mon would could be more public radio then that!? |
Broadcast History
Aired on WBUR's arts podcast
Transcript
[note-- the questions have been edited out of the final interview]
HOW DID YOU START THE BAND?
Nick: One night Paul had us over for dinner, and I noticed he had just hundreds of minidiscs lined up against his wall, and I?m like, what is that? I had sort of been doing the same thing, just across the hallway basically. He pulled them down and it was his collection of what he called ?reference materials,? which were just samples of stuff he found inspiring?while he was watching a movie, or just listening to the radio, he would just record it and get it down on minidisc, so he could go back to it and kind of glean something from it. So we realized right away that had a similar way of collecting and working with sound, and we wanted to see what would happen if we brought our sample collections together. Then we were off.
IF YOU HAD TO CHARACTERIZE YOUR OWN MUSIC, HOW WOULD YOU DESC...
Read the full transcript
Timing and Cues
Suggested host intro-- what's in my longer description of the piecve
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Erik Magnus
Posted on April 26, 2006 at 12:41 PM | Permalink
Review of Interview with The Books
This piece brought back a flood of memories. It reminded me of my first experiments with sound when I received a panasonic cassette recorder around age 12. Those early audio recordings I made goofing around with my brother, led me to working as a location production sound mixer for feature films. I can also appreciate the collecting of sounds on mini disc; being a fan of the format as well since the late 90's.