From the monthly archives:

September 2010

Watch and Listen to the Books

September 30, 2010

As the Books prepare to take over Shaefer Lab Theater for two shows of audio/visual razzle-dazzle tomorrow night, The Thread invites you to check out some music and a wild video from their latest album, The Way Out.

“The Way Out” & Plunderphonics

September 30, 2010

Many of this season’s Duke Performances artists share an affinity for working with or against their sources while sticking to their original medium, like how Loudon Wainwright III re-interpreted Charlie Poole within the same acoustic-instrument realm. But the Books swirl pop culture, original music, and audio ephemera into genre-bending pastiches. Bits of detritus from old

9/29 Media Roundup

September 29, 2010

In the afterglow of Megafaun, Fight the Big Bull, and friends’ triumphant recreation of American folk songs from Alan Lomax’s Sounds of the South collection, the notices are starting to trickle in.

Listen to the Ciompi Quartet

September 29, 2010

As traditions go, the music of Mozart has proven to be an elastic but intrinsically steadfast touchstone. You might say the same thing of the Ciompi Quartet, the 45-year-old institution comprised of Duke University professors. On Saturday, October 2, the Ciompi Quartet will play Mozart’s “String Quartet in D Major, K. 499,” often called “Hoffmeister”

The Art of Sampling

September 28, 2010

The Books’ sample-rich aesthetic is overtly tethered to Duke Performances’ bedrock of folk and classical offerings by Paul de Jong’s expressive cello parts, but the art of sampling itself—where snippets of music or dialogue are appropriated and collaged into new wholes—has more subtle and roundabout ties to music history.

The Books: Luck of the Draw

September 28, 2010

“Aleatoric” music is defined as “music left up to chance, usually involving a limited number of possibilities,” or created by luck. The concept is heavily associated with John Cage. The Books, a Brooklyn-based duo that emerged, quite appropriately, around the turn of the millennium, transform auditory detritus into strange, beautiful landscapes that are part electronic music,

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