It has long disappointed me that, unlike in the visual arts, most musical appropriation has failed to go much deeper than the æsthetic level. Whereas in visual arts, whole worlds of meaning are summoned by referencing older works, and that meaning becomes part of the fibre of the new work, in the musical world outside of academic circles, source sound is sampled and referenced merely on the basis of how it sounds – most meaning associated with original source material is left to the side, as long as the sounds work. I might be going out on a limb here and perhaps The Books really have no conscious idea of what they’re doing, but I’d like to think they do know, and that they’ve created one of the most satisfying works of musical appropriation, on all levels, that I’ve encountered.
The dominant (though certainly not sole) source of sound is 80s relaxation/self-help cassettes and video tapes. These are subtly edited. ‘Group Autogenics I’ starts the album with the generic deep, relaxed male voice of the new-age (which mostly seemed to look up to HAL from 2001 – A Space Odyssey as their inspiration) intoning “Hello, greetings and welcome/welcome to a new beginning, for this tape will serve you as a new beginning/That’s right, a new beginning, as we’re about ready to begin”. This is typical of the archness with which the soothing voices are manipulated. They sound like they’re saying perfectly reasonable and very serious things, until you actually snap out of passiveness into which the music may lull you and listen to the syntax. It’s the first layer of meaning, sitting just above the slow motion wash of sound which serves as the next.
This is then juxtaposed with ‘A Cold Freezin’ Night’ where a male child and female child exchange dialogue across the the sampleosphere – “…I wish I was a boy/Kill ‘em/I’m gonna kill you/I’m gonna rip your hair off/You are such a nerd/asshole…” over a jittery bass and drum dance that might have been a snatch of Graceland outtakes chopped and looped, panned and compressed. ‘I Am Who I Am’ returns sampling to the jungles of Brian Eno and David Byrne, slashing a ranting preacher over vaguely industrial loops of digitally swirled rhythm. ‘Chain Of Missing Links’ settles back into new-age wash, advising one to “allow yourself to release through the nose, through your mouth and into the spaces/located just about an inch or an inch and a half below your metaphorical heart/and about two inches behind who you were meant to be.” ‘The Story Of Hip Hop’ later in the album’s sequence fits phrases from a 1970s christian sect’s children’s album (the title star being a rabbit) into a dazzling sequence of generic hiphop breakbeats intricately sequenced to match the accident prone nature of the star.
A written description can’t begin to capture the scope of The Way Out. But it is where overall meaning emerges that things get really interesting. The slightly twisted spoken work segments could just be comedic pranks, but The Books keep the settings subtle, so the seriousness treads the line between sincere and mocking in a manner that never lets you settle on one side of that divide. And by twisting self-help words, an ultimate symbol of the self-worship of late capitalism, with the darker undercurrents that we know we are surrounded by every day – violence (and in children!), religious crusade, emotional isolation – but which narcissism works to deny, the album draws into sharp focus the hypocracy of our culture. On one side, we are urged to look into ourselves to save ourselves, while on the other, legitimate problems are characatured into entertainment. This is the kind of depth, created through the layering of reference, sound and style that is normally missing from musical appropriation.
The Books themselves do a brilliant job of laying out a conceptual framework at http://thebooksmusic.tumblr.com/. To sum up The Way Out, though, it would be best to leave with the final, soothing (expertly edited) words that conclude the album on ‘Group Autogenetics II’ over soft, deep digital percussion booms and airy ambience:
“And this becomes your reality. That’s right. And at any time you feel yourself weaken in any way you will think the word ‘food’. This is your trigger word and the moment you think or say the word, from this very moment, you will only eat. You gain enormously in weight, and all desire for self-esteem will disappear, and so it is, and so it is. And you now have an unseen assistance: And it feels so good, so relaxed, and so at ease, and you’re becoming the world and everyone in it.”
Adrian Elmer
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