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Spotlight

The Books

Sounds like: A chip off the Chi-town post-post indie rock, electro-acoustic block, shot through with quirky samples and snippets of conversation and set on a bed of strings. The Books are guitarist Nick Zammuto and violinist Paul De Jong, who combine guitar, violin, cello and banjo with sounds culled from their vast sample library, such as a chopped-up spelling bee, the voice of a Japanese flight attendant, and a speech by Winston Churchill. Their upcoming album, Lost and Safe, is out April 19th on Tomlab, a German ambient experimental electronic music label.

The Books work mainly in aleatoric music-music in which composition or method of performance is determined by elements of chance or unpredictability (some other examples being John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen). They live and make music (and maintain an annoyingly low profile) in North Adams, Massachusetts.