FACT mix 173 is a very special selection by The Books.

Formed in New York City by Paul De Jong and Nick Zammuto, The Books made an instant splash with their critically acclaimed debut album, Thought For Food. With their taste for acoustic instrumentation (what Zammuto once described as “rural soul”) and surrealist sampling, it was inevitable that the duo would be lumped in with the so-called “folktronica” scene, but anyone would functioning ears could tell that their was more to them than that. For those of you unfamiliar with it, be advised that The Books’ music is close in spirit to that of Matmos, The Focus Group, Position Normal, People Like Us, Herbert and Caribou (particularly his early work as Manitoba): playful, inventive, possessed of intelligence and warmth alike.

Zammuto and De Jong honed their concréte pop aesthetic with 2003’s The Lemon Of Pink, recording in Massachusetts and making use of vocal contributions from Anne Doernert; then came a commission from the French Ministry of Culture to compose music for a new elevator in the Pompidou Centre (later compiled on 2006’s Music For A French Elevator And Other Short Format Oddities By The Books). The third Books album, Lost And Safe, wrongfooted many with its foregrounding of Zammuto’s vocals, but stands up today as their most engaging and virtuoso work.

Having guested on his Surrounded By Silence album, they invited avant-hip-hopper Prefuse 73 to remix a wide range of material from their back catalogue for 20–‘s Prefuse 73 Reads The Books EP, and in 2005 they issued a DVD of collagistic music videos entitled Play All. Their latest album, released last week, is The Way Out – it’s 60s pysch-referencing cover art gives some indication of its musical orientation, while the band themselves claim to have drawn inspiration from self-help and hypnotherapy cassettes.

Their FACT mix kicks off with the G-force motorik space-rock of Hawkwind’s ‘Born To Go’ and takes in woozy, enveloping electronics from Mouse on Mars and Aphex Twin as well as plangent guitar reveries from Jack Rose, Loren Connors and Fred Frith, classical minimalism (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) from Philip Glass and pastoral psychedelia from The Soft Machine and Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Lovingly compiled and cleverly sequenced, this is a mixtape in the grand old style – one that paints a vivid picture of the minds behind it; is poignant, personal and timeless.

1. Hawkwind – Born to Go (Space Ritual)
2. Califone – Wingbone (Heron King Blues)
3. The Soft Machine – A Certain Kind (One)
4. The Ruins – Burning Stone (Burning Stone)
5. Nils Okland – Notten (Bris)
6. Loren Connors – Here, I’ll whisper it to you (Sails)
7. Darcy Clay – What About It (Darcy Anthology)
8. Butthole Surfers – Kuntz (Locust Abortion Technician)
9. Jack Rose – Dark was the Night, Cold was the Grounds (Two Originals Of…)
10. Aphex Twin – Curtains (Selected Ambient Works Vol.2)
11. Mouse on Mars – Chromantic (Instrumentals)
12. Captain Beefheart – Peon (Lick my Decals off, Baby)
13. Fred Frith – Almighty Home At Last (Accidental)
14. Philip Glass – Glassworks: Opening (Glassworks)
15. Penguin Cafe Orchestra – Southern Jkebox Music (Signs of Life)
16. Tortoise – Firefly (Standards)
17. Matmos – For the Trees (The Civil War)