The Books: Found Sound Abounds

Nick Zammuto’s telephone interview with Paste is yet to begin, but he already likes what he hears. “If you’re the first caller on the line, you hear this hold music that’s like fusion jazz,” Zammuto, one half of collage-rock band The Books, says once our conversation starts. “I’ve got to sample it. This is some of the best hold music I’ve ever heard."

Considering that The Way Out—the fourth and most impressive album by Zammuto and his Books partner Paul de Jong—weaves chopped-up found-sound samples through otherworldly beats and manic guitars, recording hold music doesn’t seem too far-fetched.

The duo sorted through countless hours from de Jong’s collection of 35,000 sound bits to assemble The Way Out. Here, the musical architects reveal the story behind five favorite samples.

1. “I Didn’t Know That” (0:42)
The track builds on skittish bass before a guitar swell beckons a deep, soulful shout: “I didn’t know that!” The sample, a Philadelphia thrift store find, came from a musical interlude on an early ’70s LP of a “very obscure local production about black history,” de Jong says. “For me,” Zammuto adds, “it’s a statement of being pleasantly surprised. When we look for samples, we’re looking for that feeling.”

2. “A Cold Freezin’ Night” (1:12)
The Way Out gets violent when a young boy tells his sister, “I can kill you with a rifle… cutting your toes off and working my way up, towards your brain.” The Books found the sibling threats recorded on a secondhand Talkboy, the same kind of device Macaulay Culkin used to disguise his voice in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. “If this was adults,” Zammuto says, “it would have an R rating.”

3. “I am Who I Am” (1:44)
A hurricane of bass distorts vocal samples until a man’s voice blares, “I am who I am and what I am and I will be what I will be!” Once an hour-long cassette recording of an evangelical preacher riffing on an Exodus 3:14 passage, The Books chopped and rearranged it to an “existential, universal statement,” Zammuto says. “[Our editing] changes the tone of his voice from self-assured and makes him sound totally insecure.”

4. “Thirty Incoming” (0:01)
“Hello Mary. I called… to tell you how much I enjoyed your company last evening. It really felt good to lay down next to you. I didn’t realize how much I missed that feeling.” Found on an answering machine in a thrift store, this years-old phone message is “a sample that’s completely un-self-conscious,” says de Jong. “This man is not performing for anyone. He’s not even speaking directly to someone. He’s alone—a lonely guy with great hopes to find somebody.”

5. “A Wonderful Phrase by Gandhi” (0:01)
“There is… a living power that is changeless, that holds all together; that creates, dissolves and recreates,” Gandhi said during a 1931 speech in London, a soundbyte The Books inserted into a 21-second track. The challenge, Zammuto says, was “not to dress it up. It’s essential just to hear his voice.” To de Jong, the sample represents the the band’s mission: “If you don’t reinvent or re-present it, it stands a chance to never surface again.”