My Love Of Plunderphonics
A dive into the art of sampling and all that jazz
by Joy Dunn B’29published 11/05/26
A dive into the art of sampling and all that jazz
by Joy Dunn B’29published 11/05/26
A big name in Plunderphonics in the early 2000’s was The Books, a duo made up of Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong. They released four albums, all experimenting with samples found on micro (like Zammuto’s brother’s tape recordings) or macro (popular songs, old records) scales. They've since broken up–and since I was so intrigued by the genre, I started to look into Nick Zammuto's solo work.
When I first heard “It Can Feel So Good”, the second track on Everyone, I think it was one of those YouTube rabbit hole nights where your hands seem to type away on their own, scrounging the seafloor of the internet for information on a peculiar niche. Summer had just begun, and I hadn't been sleeping all that much, so nightly web escapades were a ritual for me. I think the catalyst for my pseudo-insomnia was this random fit of anxiety I got into for a couple of months, which I had never experienced. When a new emotion appears, I think its novelty is so much more jarring than the actual thing. I downloaded meditation apps and researched stoicism, did yoga, ate sweet potatoes to try to shoo away my fears– but music was always the quickest way out of a rumination hole.
This song was like an entirely new emotion, but in the best way possible. The beginning of the track caught my ear immediately– these rain-like noises that are, somehow, inorganic. I would also compare them to single guitar plucks, or flicking a rubber band between your teeth and thumbnail. Zammuto creates these sounds, present throughout the track, with tuned PVC Pipes that serve as natural harmonics or organic distortion. This alters the pitch of audio based on the size and length of the tubes. The aforementioned raindrop sounds are created by scratching vinyl records against the grain at certain timestamps. I am always in awe of what people learn they can do with their free time, and also how deep Zammuto's alteration of preexisting sound and elements truly goes. A scratched record is often regarded as trash, but to Zammuto, it's percussion. It’s almost a nod to the organic, found nature of house music, just playing around with sounds until something really clicks.
The instrumentals are familiar to me. I used to listen to a lot of techno/electronic music while studying and sleeping– it's like my own white noise. When the effeminate voice that makes up the main sample enters the Zammuto track, she begins to lull you into an understanding of your internal state while also making you want to get up and move. Something about a woman telling me that my blood pumps through my body and makes me work makes me want to surf and cliff dive and be somebody. I’ve dedicated many melatonin-infused nights to try to source the specific sample in this song, I’ve only gotten so far as to know it's a vintage meditation tape from the 70’s, pitched up and delayed. I’ve tried to illustrate the delay here, as well as the alteration of the pitch and chopped words from the original sample:
I assume each ‘chunk’/ word from this section is delayed with staggered echoes, growing in reverb that creates this almost cascading effect (which is very prominent at 1:05).
My favorite part of the song is when the clips repeatedly shorten and become notes in themselves, making up a melody. These words are no longer words, but a crazy, harmonious beat (around 1:41) scaffolded by the popping, clicking record percussion.
I still use this song to meditate – which is a bit unusual given the minimalistic conception of meditating I feel like we’ve all been taught. It really is the most calming thing to me, especially the end of the track, which alters your interaction with the piece as you become a participant by letting out a
3:50–4:04
‘nice long sighihihihihih, aaaaaahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh’