The Books - The Way Out

The Way Out is New York’s Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong’s fourth album - their first for five years - and, as should be expected from the guitarist and cellist, it pushes the boundaries of sonic experimentation.

The album throws sample after sample at the folktronic/trancy/psychedelic sound that the duo are known for. The spoken word Group Autogenics I opens the album like a therapy session, while I Didn’t Know That has funky basslines running through all manner of Avalanches-style weirdness. Next, A Cold Freezing Night is genuinely unsettling, taking as it does, some pretty sinister childhood threats over a machine-gun beat., “I can kill you with a rifle, a shotgun/Any way I want to/Probably by cutting your toes off and working my way up towards your brain.”

I Am What I Am, while being hard to wrap your head around, gives a good idea of just how much is going on within The Way Out. Samples attack the ears at a mind-boggling rate over an insistent beat while booming These New Puritans-style instrumentation drones ominously in the background. Contrasting this, the second half of the album offers a few moments of calm that allow the brain time to realign, like the near-straightforward folktronic effort, All You Need Is A Wall and the delicate acoustics of Free Translator.

The Way Out is so many things: surreal, disorientating, absurd, disparate, hypnotic… the list goes on. What it isn’t is an accessible record for those who like their music to be of the verse/chorus/bridge/chorus variety. But this undeniably brave and interesting album covers an impressively broad scope of sounds and is challenging from start to finish.