Sound collage artists The Books have spent the past decade making music more gorgeous than the gentle waters of a summer lake. They’ve made good on the art of sampling’s boundless potential, proving that those oft-maligned tools of remixing can be used for far more than repetitive house music and hip-hop hooks.
The Books’ live shows have always been special experiences, due largely in part to the hypnotic video collages projected while they play, carefully matching torrents of found footage with the group’s ethereal tunes. In 2007, the duo released a DVD entitled Playall featuring 13 of their videos plus some weird special features, like archive footage from the ’30s of a dapper fellow emotionlessly performing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” entirely in hand-farts. Lovely stuff.
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Oh yes! Yes. “Take Time” is one of my favorite songs (Are they songs? Yes, they’re songs.) ever and I like to put it on mixes for friends so more people can get turned on to The Books. I was lucky enough to see them at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and their show is mesmerizing. The found footage is so charming and strange. I love it.
So glad to see them pop up in the world.
I’d never heard any of this until today. I’m not sure why that is, but thank you so much.