The Books were an American-Dutch duo, formed in New York City in 1999, consisting of guitarist and vocalist Nick Zammuto and cellist Paul de Jong.
[3] De Jong invited Zammuto to dinner at his apartment, where he played him some of his collection of audio and video samples, including a Shooby Taylor record.
[8] Praised by critics for its distinctive sound,[9] it featured extensive sampling from obscure sources coupled with mostly acoustic instrumentation.
Shortly after the release of Thought for Food, the band relocated to North Adams, Massachusetts, near where Zammuto had graduated from Williams College in 1999, studying chemistry and visual arts.
Before starting a three-month[16] tour of North America in April 2006, the Books had played only one concert,[7] in October 2003 at a festival in Chicago, Illinois.
"[18] Zammuto expressed apprehensiveness towards touring, but says it is necessary to make a living, given his belief that people downloading the Books' music via file-sharing[19] has put him under financial strain.
Following the release of Music for a French Elevator, the band took a break from recording to tend to their new families, tour in support of their albums, and pursue some of their own projects, which included Zammuto scoring a feature documentary about the Biosphere 2.
[23] On April 27 Pitchfork began streaming the track "Beautiful People",[24] which Zammuto described as "a three part Christian harmony mixed with a sort of euro-disco-trash beat, an orchestra's worth of sampled brass and lyrics about the twelfth root of two (my favorite irrational number), trigonometry and tangrams".
[19] Paul de Jong described it as "the new folk music...[w]e make our own instruments, use our own libraries of sound bites while trying to create something universally human.
[33][34] The Books' music usually consists of acoustic instrumentation of folk melodies usually played on guitar, cello, banjo and more, combined with a diverse range of samples obtained from cassettes found in thrift stores,[19] which are digitally processed and edited.
[5] They also rarely use a drum kit in recordings and performances, instead favouring everyday objects like children's toys and filing cabinets, which were sampled and looped.