Search - Zoey Van Goey :: Cage Was Unlocked (Dig)

Zoey van der Kamp was born into a strict Amish community in rural
Pennsylvania in 1969 and never saw an automobile until the age of 12. She
ran away to New York at the age of 15, changed her name to Zoey van Goey and
quickly became immersed in Manhattan s burgeoning street-art movement before
relocating to Berlin and finding considerable success with her street murals
and installation-based work. She became a constant, if peripheral, fixture
of Berlin s cultural elite in the late 80 s, embarking on an affair with
(and subsequently breaking the the heart of) German film director Wim
Wenders (you can spot one of her murals in Wings of Desire ). After the
Wall came down at the end of the decade, her movements become less clear,
many saying she moved into East Berlin before fading enigmatically from
public view...

Which brings us (albeit elaborately) to Zoey Van Goey the band, and, hearing
about their origins and approach to making music, their choice of name
becomes much more than an exercise in quirky wordplay.

Zoey Van Goey, like many others bands before them, were a product of
serendipity and cosmopolitan wanderlust: hailing from Canada (Matt Brennan),
Ireland (Michael John McCarthy) and England (Kim Moore), they finally
coalesced around the verdant cloisters of Glasgow University in 2006. If
this constitutes a weak parallel with their namesake s intrepid sense of
adventure, what resonates more are the intriguing contradictions, the
subject matter and the inventive musical execution of their debut album (The
Cage Was Unlocked All Along) which conjures up a wide-eyed rites of passage,
meshing the everyday with the fantastical; the optimism and adventure of
youth, with the anxieties and pressures of the modern world...

So with The Cage Was Unlocked... we find bandits and buried treasure
co-existing with tales of TEFL students teaching in Fukuyama; dark
ruminations on the coming apocalypse alongside romantic kidnap ballads; a
surreal journey that s as melodically whimsical as it is structurally
complex. With the fairytale element heightened further by Peter Diamond s
Hergé meets Henry Darger artwork, Zoey Van Goey s debut album becomes a work
of charming ambition loaded with full-blooded sing-along choruses,
understated keyboards, close harmonies and irresistible melodies - all
underpinned by various musical ephemera including vintage Super Mario sound
effects.

The album was produced by Chemikal Underground s Paul Savage (The Delgados,
The Phantom Band), and follows a brace of singles that were released in 2007
(Foxtrot Vandals) and 2008 (Sweethearts in Disguise). Following the album s
completion, the band adopted their namesake s fondness for proactive
independence and self-released The Cage Was Unlocked All Along in May of
this year, garnering excellent reviews in the process.

With Chemikal Underground now on board to give the album the international
platform it so rightfully deserves, Zoey Van Goey are now set to bring their
uniquely engaging brand of indie-pop to the masses, starting with some UK
dates in September alongside Strike The Colours.

In addition to gigging and recording, the band have also contributed to
extra-curricular projects including a musical/literary collaboration with
Falkirk art-rockers Y'all Is Fantasy Island and novelist Alan Bissett called
the Super Puny Humans , as well as composing and performing music (in
collaboration with David Paul Jones) for the National Theatre of Scotland s
stage adaptation of the Takeshi Kitano film 'Dolls.'