Thought for Food

Books | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 29, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Tomlab
• ASIN: B00006RAKZ
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #191,238 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Audio CD

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars he kept calling me at night, all hours of the night..., December 24, 2002

By 

Ryan Hennessy (Albany, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thought for Food (Audio CD)

Rare. Innovative. Mind-expanding? Smart. Exciting. Meditative. If I had to choose a bunch of All Music Guide adjectives to sum up this album, those would be them. The Books' Thought For Food is a hard album to pin down as it's electronic, and yet feels more like folk than IDM. Maybe this is what Momus was talking about? Probably not, since he was talking about folk musicians starting out with synths and making their music with those instruments as a starting point. The Books are more complicated than a simple metaphor or equation can explain.

So I'll start by saying that The Books are two men: Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong. According to a dead-on review of the record by Mark Richardson, there are four main instruments on the album: Guitar, violin, samples, and silence. Sometimes a guitar and cello will make up a bed for the samples, sometimes vice-versa. Each song is its own unique world. But throughout the whole of it, what really makes the album stunning, is the samples. Each is allowed to breath. Nothing on the album feels muddled. If Negativland is the beer, The Books are the wine. This is sampladelic music refined.

On the first track, perhaps my favorite song of the year, "Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again," there is a constantly shifting beat, as samples each struggle to get to the front. There is a contemplative and dramatic guitar line that makes its way throughout, but the clicks, glicks and beats will start and stop at a moments notice while samples of tennis matches, army generals, and a woman I recognized as "Hazel" from the NPR show Lost and Found Sound each jostle for attention but are cut off before they can say anything. It's just an impossibly profound song that doesn't come out and directly say anything. Immediately, you know The Books are up to something. The second track deals more with silence than the first, which is pretty packed. An acoustic guitar is strummed over and over to get that thick satisfying bassy sound going, and samples taken from the National Spelling Bee. A kid this time spells out the name of the song, "Read Eat Sleep," and you can audibly hear the silence and shuffling of paper that goes on when the kids are on stage standing there thinking.

"All Our Base Are Belong To Them" is a more conventional song with lots of chunky acoustic guitar that all but overwhelms the vocals. And if you pay attention you can hear Zammuto's family having a conversation during Thanksgiving, and somebody announces they're having a baby, and the family cheers and laughs. The whole album is great, but there's moments like that that really catch your attention and seem perfect and joyous. There's the moment in "Getting The Done Job" when a slow plodding glitched-up guitar suddenly jumps to life as a banjo and fiddle! Or how about when Hazel is talking over some squeekiness and the beat comes right back to where it was to interrupt her? Then there's the fuzzed-out drum beats that slap the guitar upside the head throughout "All Bad Ends All." Who ever thought that a twee sampladelic folk album could be life-affirming? Sadly, the album seems to have no sense of when it isn't welcome anymore and ends well before I wanted it to on a song that hardly works as a fitting last song for an album this magical.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A-OK, January 17, 2005

By 

jasonnn "-jasonnn" (kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thought for Food (Audio CD)

It is only appropriate to start out this review with my first experience with The Books since everyone will probably remember theirs as well. After a long, or not so long [its irrelevant] day my two friends and I decided it was time for a little cool down. We went into my friend's room while she turned out all the lights and left only the TV muted on static to light the room. Then she turned on this album and we all lay there and listened. I had heard The Books before but this, for some reason, felt like the first time I was really hearing them in their avant-garde entirety. The semi-random sounds and snapshot vocal samples seared the air in a summation of life and music. `Twas grand, to say the least.
This album is really difficult to break down or sectionalize. As you listen to it, there are obvious changes of pace following the different songs, but somehow, the vein of the music always seems to remain in tact. From the first quasi-notes of "Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again" The Books seem to be reaching for a lifelike quality for their music that can really only be described by that same word: Life. This song has a straight beat that is surrounded by samples of people sort of talking through their problems. Mid-way through the song you hear an elderly lady discussing her problem with her heart conditions and some bad checks she was accused of writing. As this monologue goes on, you get drawn in until finally her voice seems to explode into nothingness and the song goes on. This type of forget-what-you-know attitude prevails with this band and particularly this album.
The record continues regardless with "All Our Base Are Belong To Them" where the listener is welcomed to the human race (ironically by an unfamiliar voice) and the band softly croons "I was born on the day that music died," a vocal testament to the sheer originality of this record. At times it does make one question what is music.
On "Motherless Bastard" a small boy is heard yelling for his mommy or daddy only to be met by a male voice informing him he has neither in a less than comforting manner. The song then continues serenely on in a fashion that almost makes one forget about the tragedy that opens the track. Fear not, though, we are quickly reminded of this terribly awkward and disheartening situation with a reprise of the clip. The pure emotion tugging power of this track is almost unnerving considering that this is probably the most up-front, straightforward track on the record.
The rest of the record continues on in a similar fashion, by the end, anointing the listener with The Books' amazing version of human experience.

9.2/10

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Welcome to the human race... you're a mess", December 5, 2002

By 

Mike Henderson (Ann Arbor, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thought for Food (Audio CD)

Innovative. That's a word I haven't heard very often referring to new releases this year. I always love albums that are difficult to explain to someone that's never heard it, especially if that person listens to as much stuff as you do, giving you a wide selection for points of reference to choose from, yet still coming up short in your attempt at an accurate description. Collectively known as the Books, the duo of Paul de Jong (from New York) and Nick Zammuto (from North Carolina) have produced an album that contains some pretty off-the-wall sound samples, disturbing dialogue, and even some old-fashioned singing (huh?). All this takes place over the top of some type of music, usually very simplistic in nature, such as an acoustic guitar and a violin. While odd voice samples are nothing new, you've never heard them employed in such a way as found here. This doesn't come off completely flawless, however. Thought For Food feels a little rough around the edges. On some tracks, everything comes together beautifully. In other tracks, they slightly miss their mark. When you've got something that sounds as fresh as this, why nitpick?