The Books
Lost and Safe

THE REVIEW

For the second time, I am going back to highlight this group, The Books, formed by the American-Dutch duo Nick Zammuto Willscher and Paul De Jong, who have been fairly ignored by most (likely due to simple ignorance rather than anything else). They have made electro-noise-ambient fused with delicate and rarefied lo-fi folk their strength (someone coined the genre "folktronica" at their debut). Even with this "Lost and Safe," they return to mixing samples of sounds, effects, phrases (in the track "Venice," you hear an Italian "così, più in là, via le teste" said by an anonymous gondolier) taken from all facets of human knowledge; decontextualized fragments that, assembled in this almost three-quarters-of-an-hour puzzle of splendid music by the New York group in their third endeavor, find new vigor and a new expressive guise.

An enchanting album that literally sends you into a trance with every listen and captures the most visceral depths of each person, skillfully combining the iciness of electronics used in the rhythms, in the "cut and wrap" experiments, in the sounds that are always between the refined and lo-fi, with the warmth of more typically acoustic instruments (violins, acoustic guitars, banjos are skillfully used in various tracks) and the fragile vocals often hanging by a thread (of voice) by the various members (often interchangeable) of one of the most fragmented musical ensembles in recent years. A fascinating metronome full of allusions and happily dissonant moments that infiltrate between subcutaneous folds and penetrate the heart's rhythms until it beats in unison with the 11 tracks of this splendid electro-acoustic work.

Beautiful and intriguing yet difficult to digest in a single session for most, due to the richness of passages, breaks, and continuous inventions, which by keeping "destabilizing" the listener, at the same time deprive them of the pleasure of completely immersing themselves and savoring more than just scraps of atmospheres continuously fragmented and disorienting. An album that once again marks a small step forward for the duo, the important thing will be to clarify "towards where," because the risk of collapsing on oneself is frighteningly just around the corner unless there are future decided changes in direction. Little is given to us to know from the rare liner notes (rather insignificant and somewhat misleading, in my humble opinion) which, apart from the lyrics, at least have the decency to refer everything to the official website.