The Books

The Books were a duo from Massachusetts made up of Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong. They worked with guitars, keyboards, bass, and a lot of sampling, stitching together folk melodies with electronic textures and found sounds. Their songs, like 'An Owl With Knees' and 'A Dead Fish Gains The Power Of Observation,' often felt like collages, quiet, fragmented vocals drifting over intricate, atmospheric beds of music.

They put out a handful of albums in the 2000s, starting with 'Thought for Food' in 2002 and followed by 'The Lemon of Pink,' 'Lost and Safe,' and 'A Bird in the Earth.' The music never settled into one category, but it had a consistent, curious quality, less about traditional song structures and more about building little sonic worlds from pieces of things. It was the kind of work that gathered a dedicated following without ever really breaking into wider pop channels.