The Books
Thought for Food

“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.” [Lewis Carroll]

“A man who knows nothing of chemistry, could he understand what H2O means? Would he realize that this symbol could evoke the image of an ocean?” [Lewis Padgett]

The visual arts are the passion of the duo The Books. Then science, found sound, and ballet. Nick Zammuto, a guitarist from Massachusetts, and Paul De Jong, a violinist from Rotterdam, bring the project to life in New York City. “Thought For Food” (Tomlab, 2002) is their debut. The percussion fragiley consists of a few scattered hits on the body of the acoustic guitar, whose strings, plucked or caressed or squished, accompany us into a wonderland, through the looking glass. Found voices (from the street, documentaries, radio reports, and films) pile up with the gasps of the violin. The rest is done by a laptop. Thus fragments are candidly composed, not in linear songs but emulating a sort of choral, panic singing, in predominantly urban contexts. Every evidence jolts and falls. From a light stream of consciousness, emerge styles, or appearances or simulacra, of flamenco, country blues, hillbilly, folk, chamber music, and aleatoric music. “Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again”, “Read, Eat, Sleep”, “All Bad Ends” are constellations without form but clear; they stand on the horizon of crystalline architectures of rain and sun that they evoke. Tweets and clear voices catapult the Penguin Orchestra* and a hippogriff, ridden by Terry Riley and Sandy Bull, chasing it to bring it back to earth, tearing faustian carrots. Every worry evaporates. A friendly and familiar sound rises and falls. It is warm as bread. It is smooth as butter. “The thought for nourishment” is then another idea of popular music, bizarre but genuine. Light, gentle, inventive, vaguely sullen. The work is a small, radiant jeweled gem. It is contemplated with a smile. The voice-overs and the rare singing (“All Our Base Are Belong To Them”, “Getting The Done Job”) float on the accords and astonished scales of guitar and violin, of banjo and cello, under the strokes of the metallophone.

If it is not the music of the spheres, at least it is that of the cylinders. It takes you far, near, and all around. When finally a distinct rhythm arrives, a stomping loop, childish voices dominate, and the adult regulator suddenly dictates silence (“Deafkids”). But can you explain music that has not yet been invented? Or are they not music?

What are these Books anyway? The Books resemble musical libraries, an art installation, drawings of eggs with a small hole in the shell, crazy dragonflies, the tortoise that Achilles does not overtake, the formulaH2O, a badger, a corkscrew, Humpty Dumpty’s reasoning. Certainly, the Books are “slithy”, that is, slippery and lively. Like the bubbling ocean foam. Abandoning oneself to the golden glow of a brief dream.