The Books

Thanks to the previously unheard combination of obscure samples and primarily acoustic instruments, post-new-agers and electro-folksters The Books managed to land a surprise hit with their 2002 debut album, “Thought For Food”. For their current release, “The Way Out” (2010), they took five years, busily working away in the studio. This way they managed to refine their special cut-up technique, which blends vocal samples with folk fragments, as well as their audiobook-like spoken lyrics. It is not only as regards their technique that the Dutch-American duo is reminiscent of chief-eccentric William S. Burroughs; they could also rival him in terms of weirdness. Next to the bizarre story of a grasshopper or the ode to the twelfth root of two, they also have a behaviouristic children’s song dealing with violent fantasies and children’s gender roles. Weird as weird can be.