The excellent Radiolab podcast recently featured Zoë Keating, a classiclly-trained cellist who now makes absolutely entrancing loop music in real time using digital samplers. Radio Lab host Jad Abumrad referred to Keating as the "quantum cellist" and her rich, layered, and haunting music has been described as "the perfect music for apocalyptic landscapes." From Radiolab:
Zoe Keating is the cellist from our live show, War of the Worlds. She used to play with the band Rasputina and now solos and records music for films, such as horror flick, "The Devil's Chair" (coming out September 30th) and a PBS documentary on Lincoln's assassination. Her music process reminded us a bit of ours (looping and layering sound) so she and Jad sat down together in San Francisco to talk shop and listen to some unreleased stuff off her new album (as of yet untitled). In this podcast, you'll hear Jad and Zoe discuss the physics (if not metaphysics) of looping sound and how to use a 17th century instrument to make avant-garde electronic music.
Quantum Cello (Radiolab, thanks Jennifer Lum),
Zoë Keating (artist page)
