50 albums: 2010 - Into the Trees by Zoë Keating

I first encountered Zoë Keating some time in 2008 when I happened across the Radiolab War of the Worlds broadcast that she did the music for, eMusic and iTunes both had releases by her that I then downloaded. She makes remarkable and wonderfully atmospheric music, she does it live, using a cello, some looping software, a laptop and some pedals - but she doesn't have that predictable (dull) formula that most similar artists have (and there was quite the surge in loop-pedal driven solo artists back then).

At some point in the year or so after the Radiolab thing she became a Twitter sensation, if memory serves the fire was lit when someone used her music without permission, and some well-followed folk tweeted about it. She became the first person I followed on Twitter who got a million followers - I'm not sure whether those follows turned into sales, I hope so, but I think it's significant that she still has more than a million followers. I think that's probably down to the fact that she's very good at Twitter.

Into The Trees was released in 2010 and is such a beautifully full piece of work, and the sort of music that rewards repeated listening, that it doesn't matter much that four years on, the follow up (solo) still album hasn't arrived.

Zoë Keating - "(To-day's version of) The Path"

(play on YouTube)

Last year Zoë made it over to the UK and Hazel and I saw her at an overcrowded Vortex.

Most of her music is now on Bandcamp, including the wonderful Into The Trees... for just $5 - that's quite the bargain!
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