Zoë Keating’s loops and rhythms
Monday Reading #46
Monday Reading is my weekly recommendation of something I’ve found thought-provoking or fascinating. Sometimes it is about something I have read. Sometimes it is about television or food or music or projects I care about supporting. Sometimes I do not send it on Monday. Please share with anyone who might like the vibes!
I’ve talked before about the music I listen to during therapeutic ketamine treatments. Lately I’ve been listening to this one Zoë Keating track from her 2005 self-produced album. Like, listening to it on repeat.
She uses electronic sampling to build up these incredible compositions, loops layered over each other and added and then taken away. They’re good for kind of zoning out because there’s so much repetition, but also because you can listen in a meditative way and try to follow a particular loop as the sonic field gets more crowded.
Some of the songs have a dark feel, but not this one. It feels something, my friend Terri said, like being held. My favorite part is when a new loop kicks in around 48 seconds: a rising and then descending pattern of double stops, which are two notes on different strings played together. That’s that kind of broad rasp you hear—the double stops. (I play the cello as an extremely middling hobby. There’s your lore for the day.) There’s just something warm about it that I really like.
I sort of think of myself as someone to whom music isn’t all that important, but that isn’t really true. I just listen to songs I love on endless repeat a lot until they slip into a groove in my brain and free up some other space for thinking.
Anyway, more soon, I hope. Thanks for being here.
More ketamine jams:
