January 2012
8 posts
'Bar Hopping' live online broadcast on Dublab... →
Hello!
Tonight’s Los Angeles performance of ‘Bar Hopping’ with Joan Jeanrenaud and myself on cellos will broadcast live online on Dublab. 8PM to 10:30PM PST!
http://dublab.com/events/8497/live-broadcast-kaleidoscope-of-pacific-standard-time/
Hope you enjoy the piece!
Paul.
Zammuto (the new band) : First live shows!
Hey All, The new band is playing it’s first ever shows: FEB 3: Mass Moca, North Adams, MA (Western Mass, our home town venue) FEB 4: 92YTribeca, New York, NY (Downtown) FEB 6: Brighton Music Hall, Allston, MA (Boston Area) Don’t miss your chance to say you were there from the beginning! We’ll be playing mostly tracks from the upcoming Zammuto LP (out April 3 on Temporary...
'Bar Hopping' premieres tonight in San Francisco
Tonight ‘Bar Hopping’, a collaboration between myself and (ex-Kronos Quartet cellist and composer) Joan Jeanrenaud will premiere in San Francisco. The seven-movement composition is for one or two live cellists, pre-recorded sound and video. Joan will play the performances in San Francisco and I will join her on stage for the shows in Los Angeles next week on the 27th and 28th. Info...
'A Day With' Nick Zammuto
Hey All,
Here’s a short documentary Matt Day made about my process and life at home and in the studio. We spent a day together last summer shooting this video, and hopefully he’ll be documenting the time leading up to the debut ‘Zammuto’ concert on Feb. 3 at Mass Moca. (more on this soon)
A Day With Nick Zammuto from Matt Day on Vimeo.
If you prefer YouTube...
WatchBar Hopping: Golden Gate
Another two-minute movement from Bar Hopping, co-composed by Joan Jeanrenaud and Paul de Jong, 2011/12.
Performances will take place: January 20 & 21 @ 8 pm (Joan alone) Southern Exposure (SoEx), 3030 20th Street (@ Alabama), San Francisco (415) 863-2141 http://soex.org/index.html January 27th and 28th @ 8 pm (Joan and Paul) Southern California...
Stream of the new EP
Hey Everyone,
Here’s a stream of the new EP…Now available for presale at Make Mine. My heartfelt thanks to all who have listened, reposted, blogged and written about it this week, it was quite the showing! We’re very excited to debut the new material live next month…
Zammuto - Idiom Wind EP - Make Mine, London UK by zammuto
best,
Nick
Watch
‘Bar Hopping’ - Paul de Jong & Joan Jeanrenaud
http://vimeo.com/34108895 Here are the first two minutes of ‘Bar Hopping’ for two cellos, recorded sound and video, co-composed by Paul de Jong and Joan Jeanrenaud, which we are completing at this time for performances on 1/20-21 at Southern Exposure http://soex.org/index.html in San Francisco and on 1/27-28 at SciArc...
Tonight 1/6 @ Williams College, Williamstown, MA:... →
I’ll be playing a 2001 piece for cello and tape ‘Eldorado’, and together with Todd Reynolds ‘Inward Bound’ for tape, violin, cello and video, which I wrote last year for his album ‘Outerborough’. The concert is free, tonight at 8PM.
Regards, Paul
December 2011
3 posts
2011 Year in Photos
Hey Everyone,
I just posted a new photo album here: http://zammutosound.com/photos.cfm
These are all pictures from our little homestead in Vermont this year. The small building with the woodshed attached is my studio where ‘The Way Out’ and the new album were written/recorded/mixed/mastered… My wife, Molly, is the pregnant gardener in all these photos, and this year the farm...
New Shows
Hey Everyone,
I’m happy to announce that the new band is playing it’s first shows in early February! You can get tickets here:
FEB 3: Mass Moca, North Adams, MA
FEB 4: 92YTribeca, New York, NY
FEB 6: Brighton Theater, Boston, MA
We had our first rehearsals in November, and it made us all quite giddy. It’s coming together better than we had ever hoped. Please...
Ep Release on Make Mine Records
Hey All,
My old friend Manish from London runs a 7” Label called Make Mine, and we decided to release three of the songs from the upcoming LP this December, gearing up for the full length release next year. (about 10 years ago ’The Books’ were his labels first release!)
Side A will be Idiom Wind
Side B will be F U C-3PO
And the bonus ‘digital only’ will be...
October 2011
3 posts
Birth of Cy
Hey All,
This is more on the personal side of my blog posts, but I wanted to share with you the birth of our third son, Cy:
He was born here at home in Vermont, in a big tub in our living room, on October 23. Molly’s water broke at around 4:30pm that day, and her contractions started in earnest around 6 pm. The boys, Sepp (5yo) and Asa (2yo), were busy messily painting their...
August 2011
3 posts
July 2011
5 posts
New track tonight...
Just finished track #3. I will post at midnight east coast for 48 hrs…
best,
Nick
Introducing: Achantè - A Portrait of Haitian...
This is a brand new film I did the soundtrack/sound-design for, and the origin of ’Groan Man…’ Here’s the trailer:
Achantè Extended Trailer from Mazibel on Vimeo.
It’s a 35 minute, image and music driven look at the vibrant, and often misrepresented, religion of Vodou (or Voodoo), native to Haiti. It’s directed by Emily McMehen, and also produced by Emily...
June 2011
3 posts
Daytrotter Session is Now Live
Check out the Books Daytrotter session here!
The Books - Daytrotter Session
Hey All,
This will go live tomorrow, leading up to our giant free show in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park tomorrow (Friday) night.
We stopped by the Daytrotter studios during our fall tour to record a few tracks. Strangely, it was one of our first ‘real’ recording studio experiences, since we make all our music at home. It was a blast, the session had a great feel. Along...
Zammuto – Birth of a New Band
Hey everyone,
I can’t tell you how much fun I’ve been having in the studio recently. I’m just finishing the first tracks of the new project and wanted to share the very first one with you. It’s called ‘Yay’ and you can download it here:
https://www.yousendit.com/download/dkJvWGJIQzNGOFR2Wmc9PQ or http://soundcloud.com/zammuto/zammuto-yay
It will be a three or four piece band, hopefully...
May 2011
1 post
New Website - www.zammutosound.com
Hey All,
Nick here. Sorry for the recent lull in my posts, but you can expect a flurry of activity over the summer, as I’ve been very busy in the studio:
Firstly, I’m going to start writing about all of the tracks on our first three records, as I did with ‘The Way Out’. As some of you may have noticed, I had a chance to remaster and redesign the records for our move...
April 2011
1 post
Spring 2011 European Tour
The Books embark on a European Tour late April to mid May!
26.04 Volksbühne | Berlin, Germany | 27.04 Leipzig Central Theater | Leipzig, Germany | 28.04 Club Manufaktur Kulturbetrieb | Schorndorf, Germany | 29.04 St. Gallen Palace | St. Gallen, CH | 30.04 Interzona | Verona, IT | 01.05 Circolo Degli Artisti | Rome, IT | 02.05 Auditorium Santa Caterina | Foligno, IT |...
March 2011
1 post
Touring the next two weeks...
Hey All,
We’re touring the US for a couple weeks into the territories we missed on our fall runs… hope to see you there!
We’ll be carrying all of the special edition (colored vinyl) LP/CD Reissues of our first three records with us for the table, and they look BEAUTIFUL. I’ll be blogging more about these very soon…
30.03 Mr. Small Theatre | Millville, PA |...
January 2011
1 post
European Tour Dates
Hey All,
We’ll be in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Denmark in late April/early May, then heading back in July to the UK to Portishead ATP, and likely add dates in Ireland, France and Spain around then.
26.04. BERLIN VOLKSBÜHNE 27.04. LEIPZIG CENTRALTHEATER 28.04. SCHORNDORF MANUFAKTUR 29.04. ST.GALLEN (CH) PALACE 30.04. TURIN / RIVOLI (IT) CASTELLO DI RIVOLI 01.05. ROM (IT)...
October 2010
3 posts
Interior, Upstairs
Hey Everyone,
Nick here once more. Here’s the upstairs: (Sorry if this reads a little like the Books on MTV Cribs, but i figure i’ll try to get it all in in one go.) One caveat before I start: not to overstate it, but I hate friggin’ drywall. So you’ll notice most everything is finished with knotty pine tongue and groove from our local saw mill. I love the warmth and...
Interior, Downstairs
Hey All,
Nick here, again. Thanks for all of intrest in my last post about our home. At your request, here are some pictures of the inside of the house I took last winter. I’ll show you the downstairs tonight and the upstairs tomorrow. (Please excuse the kid clutter in most of these pictures:)
Usually we enter the house through the sunroom. The planting bed under the windows and the...
cash4oneness asked: I hope it isn't too lame to ask you; is the guitar part for "All You Need is a Wall" played in standard tunning? Love the new album either way.
September 2010
3 posts
Building Our Home
Hey All,
Nick here. I originaly wrote this for Impose Magazine, as part of their friends with benefits section. It’s the condensed story of how my wife, Molly, and I built our home in Vermont… I’d like to write about it more, since it was one of the big projects I tackled during the break between The Way Out and Lost and Safe. And I have a lot to say about the relationship...
Zach Miskin - For Your Safety
Hey All,
Our friend Zach Miskin just released a cello record today:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0040GCSW8?ie=UTF8&parent=B0040GW0X0
Both Paul and I made tracks for the record, as well as Todd Reynolds and Padma Newsom/Bryce Desner, our good friends from Clogs/The National, and others.
Check it out if you love the Cello! We do. Incidentally, Zach was the fellow who introduced us to...
All Things Considered.
Hey All,
A couple months back Jacob Ganz from NPR came up to talk to us. He stopped by at both of our home studios to see how we work, and sat down for a family dinner at our place where Sepp (now 4) treated us to his scatalogical a capella version of the All Things Considered themesong.
It was a pleasure to talk to Jacob. He had good questions and insight into the music and I’m looking...
August 2010
4 posts
kendrasollars asked: why are there slight differences in The Story of Hip-Hop on the digital version vs the vinyl? For example, on the vinyl version the narrator, about 10 seconds in, only hums twice as opposed to three times on the digital version and on the third a deep bass sound kicks in. There are a couple other differences I've noticed and was just curious about this.
Group Autogenics II
Hey all,
Along with Group Auto I and Chain of Missing Links, this track forms the third in the trilogy of hypno-themed tracks that bookend the record. There was such an avalanche of great voices from thrift shop tapes that it was clear early on that we had to spread them out over several tracks. Thinking in reverse, we knew that the final sample on the record would be:
“and it feels so...
Free Translator
Hi Everyone.
This track came out of a simple concept that we discovered a few years ago. During the Lemon of Pink era, every so often we would get a review in a foreign language, like Japanese or Italian, and it seemed so exotic, of course, we would want to know what it said. In fact, sometimes we get reviews in English that look like a foreign language as well. We needed a translator so...
The Story of Hip Hop
Hey, good morning, just three tracks left!
Hip Hop the genre is largely credited to the Bronx block parties of the late seventies where, by popular demand, percussion loops were isolated and looped as a rhythmic bed for prototypical emcees. The origins of the term are fuzzy. I always assumed, apparently wrongly, that it had something to do with a variant on the genre bebop which inspired the...
July 2010
19 posts
We Bought the Flood
Hey All,
If you’ve seen our live show, you know that video has always been our ‘front man’. Since Windish convinced us to start touring we knew we needed some kind of foil to keep attention moving around the stage so we could focus on the task at hand without feeling like an ant under a magnifying glass. Since then it’s turned into this strange hybrid form of...
A Wonderful Phrase By Gandhi
Hi Everyone.
In 1931 Mahatma Gandhi was asked by Columbia Gramaphone to make a record for them. With some second thoughts, he decided to record an essay that he had written called ‘On God’. It is one of the best recordings of his voice still in existence, and Paul had found several instances of it on various historical LP’s in his collection. We used a small fragment of this...
Thirty incoming (second half)
Hey all,
sorry! I was so sleepy last night… my thoughts were feeling way in the background. Now they feel more front and center so I’ll write a bit more about 30 incoming.
I can subconsciously trace the musical imagery of this track to something that my father told me when I was in school studying the visual arts. I think at the time he was coming to terms with the fact that I was...
Thirty Incoming (first half)
Hey All,
This track contains what I have come to believe is the ‘best answering machine tape of all time”. I remember the first time I heard the tape pretty clearly. We were in the van, a gray 15 passenger Dodge we called Arthur, on tour in 2006 somewhere in the Midwest. My wife and I were previewing some of the tapes that we had found during the past week when we first played...
in the meantime
Hey All,
I’m meeting with Todd Reynolds this morning about the track/video we’re making with him. Then we’re taking the boys on a long car trip. (try keeping this up for 5 hours straight!)
I’ll write about Thirty Incoming tonight. In the meantime check this out (thanks to fellow tumblr user awpoop for finding it):
Books: Check ‘em out.
Until this evening,
Nick
All You Need Is A Wall
Hey All,
This is a pretty cryptic song:
and if its a wall then you should cast a shadow maybe possibly it’s a thought you think is true when you appear to be belief, belief
i never loved a wall so much
asleep in a chair where the two go click look at the floor flat pattern order it’s the great power one receives from a very modest source and you don’t feel a thing when you...
Chain of Missing Links
Hey everybody,
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Happy New Great Year!
Consciousness is exploding and developing!
We find a lot of unmarked and cryptically labeled cassettes. Most of them just turn out to be mixtapes, which are fun to listen to in the van, but every once and a while there’s something really unexpected on there. The voice from ”Chain of...
I Am Who I Am
Hello All,
“I Am Who I Am” came from one of Paul’s greatest finds to date. The whole rant came from a rare sermon that he found on a tape in a Salvation Army somewhere. The sermon is about Exodus 3:14 and the many other occurrences of the “Name of God” in the Bible (and the Torah for that matter.) In the Old Testament God tells Moses (in Hebrew) that his name is...
Cold Freezin’ Rhythm:
This is the sound...
Beautiful People
Hey,
Beautiful people, happy full moon.
Apart from being called a nerd countless times in the most public of ways, i’m really pleased with the response to this track so far. In the vast hymnal of songs written about the twelfth root of two, this one seems to be finding it’s place, alleluia. I know Urban Outfitters likes it, and they’re not geeks…
Seriously, if...
A Cold Freezin' Night
Hi All.
A Cold Freezin’ Night also came very early in the process of making ‘The Way Out’. The Talkboy tapes, as I described in my blog entry of June 23, were another highlight of Paul’s sample library. Since we leaked this track last month, the responses have ranged from unbridled joy, to bitter commentary on my parenting skills. (It’s funny how many people assume...