Imogen Heap - Pop with a Fizz

On the scene for well over a decade now, Imogen Heap stands as one of the rare female artists who, in the crowded Anglo-American landscape, has managed to preserve her own individuality beyond the fads of the moment; besides possessing a highly distinctive voice and striking creative originality, she keeps writing and producing intimate, delicate pop songs of real substance. Perfectly at home in today's world of social networks like Facebook, YouTube and especially Twitter (where she has a sizeable following), Heap is the kind of artist who, having achieved mixed commercial success alongside critical praise, keeps going her own way without selling out, staying in close direct contact with her fans and using what she calls video-blogs to document the progress of her work.

In the meantime, she also built herself a studio in her parents' old basement, "The Hideaway", where she recorded her latest work, Ellipse, in its entirety.

Early days

Born in the eastern suburbs of London, Imogen showed a certain curiosity for music from an early age, soon trying her hand at piano, cello and clarinet. Dissatisfied, however, with the rigour of classical music, and always feeling like an outsider among her peers ("I was really too tall for my age, and the way I dressed made no sense at all"), she preferred spending her time hiding inside an old built-in wardrobe, where she taught herself to produce and manipulate sounds on a computer — a skill that would later become the hallmark of her work. Her talents were further honed as a teenager at the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology in London (whose alumni include plenty of high-profile pop stars, from Jessie J to Adele and James Blake).

In her early years she took part in various collaborations, which among other things led her to meet Guy Sigsworth, who would become a close friend and trusted collaborator for years to come, and with whom she shared a passion for heavy sound manipulation and pop melodies. Sigsworth himself (who had already worked with Björk) would go on to become an in-demand producer for many other, better-known stars, including Madonna (he's behind "What It Feels Like For A Girl", one of the finest moments on "Music"), Britney Spears, and the Alanis Morissette of "Flavours Of Entanglement", where his touch is easy to hear in the electronic flourishes that feel rather foreign to the Canadian singer-songwriter's familiar sound (just listen to "Versions Of Violence" to get an idea).

At the time, though, Sigsworth was still active on London's underground scene and was collaborating with Alexeander Nilere and various musicians on the multicultural project Acacia. Heap took an active part in the band's live shows in the capital's clubs and contributed backing vocals on almost every track of their debut, Cradle. Unfortunately only a couple of singles seem to have drawn any real critical attention, and legal troubles combined with a still somewhat reluctant record label ended up blocking the album's release, originally planned for 1997, so that Cradle never actually reached the shops. A real shame; anyone wanting to explore the strange landscape of mid-90s "underground pop" would do well to seek those tracks out. Hybrid and jagged, Cradle is a fairly unique musical experiment, built on remarkably complex instrumentation and a distinctive studio production. Ethnic sounds (Indian and African in particular, given the geographical backgrounds of the various musicians involved), dance rhythms, trip hop, guitars and post-rave influences all blend with airy pop melodies, sung in Nilere's almost soulful voice. The single "Maddening Shroud" (for which they even shot a suitably dazed video) would resurface years later on Details, the product of Heap and Sigsworth's project under the name Frou Frou. The original lyrics and upbeat melody of the sexually confused "Sway" earned critical praise, while also worth mentioning are a wonderfully curious cover of Morrissey's "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get", and the backing vocals on "Sympathy", "I'm In Love With Love" and especially "Woe Woe Song" (complete with a mini organ solo), which show the first seeds of the Heap yet to come. The highly distinctive "Unfulfilled Desire", with its hazy tropical atmospheres, is the perfect fusion statement for the whole project.

After the disappointment, and the subsequent split of the Acacia project, Heap carried on her own path, while staying in touch with the band's former members.

After an appearance at the Prince's Trust concert in Hyde Park, Heap signed a deal with Almo Sounds, and in 1998 came iMegaphone (an anagram of her first and last name), her first true solo project. With help from Sigsworth, and especially from Dave Stewart of Eurythmics in the producer's chair, the album was taken more seriously, and the label's backing brought it to the attention of a wider audience, earning it a generally warm reception.

iMegaphone certainly boasts some lovely sounds and ideas, but the songwriting is still very raw and adolescent, falling more or less in line with the "angry young women" trend kicked off a few years earlier by artists like Fiona Apple and, above all, Alanis Morissette with "Jagged Little Pill" — only reworked here in a more acid-pop, far less abrasive form. "Shine" could easily pass for the equivalent of "You Learn", while "Sweet Religion" plays the same role as "All I Really Want". The various singles pulled from the album, like "Getting Scared" and "Come Here Boy", and especially the alt-tinged videos accompanying them, introduced audiences to a twenty-something with a strong personality, messy hair and a distinctive voice — all elements that stick in the mind, even if the songs themselves slip by a little too harmlessly. Worth noting, though, is the album's closer, the remarkable "Sleep", a surprisingly beautiful ballad with rarefied atmospheres, masterfully sung in the barest of whispers, which also kicks off Heap's curious habit of ending every album with a much slower track. Another disappointment awaited her, however, when her label rejected the follow-up to iMegaphone for lacking a hit single, and following an internal management shake-up, Heap found herself among the artists dropped by the label.

Frou Frou: a pop balloon takes flight

Without a deal once again, Heap didn't lose heart, taking part in various collaborations, including one with the hip-hop/funk outfit Urban Species; she also wrote "Meantime" with former bandmates Sigsworth and Nilere for the soundtrack of the independent film "G:MT Greenwich Mean Time", and sang on a Jeff Beck record.

After an almost chance invitation into the studio from Sigsworth, who needed a hand with a new solo project of his, the two of them ended the session with a demo of "Flicks" and decided to put together a whole album together. Released under the name Frou Frou, Details arrived in 2002, the first real work in which Heap put her ideas and past experiences to full use.

Listening to Details feels like swimming in sparkling water. Every song is a tiny pop symphony in which every acoustic sound captured from traditional instruments is extracted, polished and then painstakingly reassembled, helping to create atmospheres that are light, fresh and weightless. Imogen's breathy vocal timbre and her falsetto are perfectly suited to the melodies and arrangements of the album's eleven tracks. The sound of Details is in fact remarkably cohesive, and the various singles drawn from it (in Italy, the video for "It's Good To Be In Love" got the most exposure via MTV, but equally well-known and arguably stronger are "Breath In", "Let Go" and "Must Be Dreaming") are catchy from the very first listen, while still remaining thoroughly classy productions, skilfully balanced between pop and electronica and inlaid with highly elaborate instrumentation. "Psychobabble", the album's "darkest" track, calls on the Bollywood Strings Orchestra to close the song on an evocative, dramatic string section, while the aforementioned "Maddening Shroud" from the Acacia days sounds decidedly fresher here, and "Only Got One" offers the album's loveliest melodic opening, carried along by a tight drumbeat. On the aforementioned "Flicks", Heap uses her voice not only to sing the lyrics but also to produce onomatopoeic vocalisations as a kind of accompaniment, an evocative device that remains an integral part of her style to this day, and the same goes for the lovely, delicate vocal textures of "Shh". Worth noting too is the closing track, the gorgeous "acoustic" ballad "The Dumbing Down Of Love", which adds the chill-inducing jazz notes of a trumpet to Imogen's whispered vocal.

Among the unreleased tracks not included on the album but available online, special mention should go to "Old Piano", which uses the sparse chords of an old, out-of-tune piano, underpinned by light electronic arrangements, to create the atmosphere of a rainy spring afternoon — a minimalist exercise worthy of David Sylvian.

The album once again achieved a decent level of public success, but failed to clear the bar the label had hoped for, perhaps because the whole production was simply too pop-refined for an audience that, in England at least, was at that time deep in indie fever. A year later the pair reunited to work on the soundtrack for "Shrek 2", breathing new life into "Holding Out For A Hero", the 80s slice of plastic pop that Bonnie Tyler had taken to the top of the charts.

With the Frou Frou project mutually put on hold, Imogen Heap goes back to working solo, and it's here that she begins the curious project she still pursues today: posting a steady stream of video blogs and fragments of songs, words, and sounds recorded at home or out on the street and sampled on her laptop, to show fans the progress of her new songs week by week, while at the same time inviting anyone willing to chip in with advice or even collaborate by sending her their own recordings. She announces plans to release an album within a year and mortgages her house to rent a studio and buy the gear she needs.

Version 2.0 and the birth of heapsound

By 2004 Speak For Yourself is ready and already hotly anticipated by her most devoted fans, but this time Heap (having learned her lesson from past experiences) prefers to distribute it herself online, setting up her own independent label (Megaphonic Records) to launch it on the market. She only licenses the album to Sony under a one-off deal later on, once it has already become a sizeable hit in the UK and the US and needs bigger backing for global distribution — without anyone being able to interfere with her artistic choices as a result.

Heap's first real hit is "Hide And Seek", which also turns out to be one of the finest songs in her entire catalogue. An unusual track built solely from her own voice, layered and filtered through a harmonizer, its pure melody and gorgeous lyrics send it straight to number 1 on the US charts. What really casts the spell is the voice itself, soaring across octaves, marking out the rhythm and building striking dissonances at moments of tension before unwinding again. Less saccharine than its sibling Details, perhaps because it was written entirely on her own, Speak For Yourself is Heap's album of maturity, confirming her ease in the multifaceted role of writer, performer and producer — a fairly rare quality on the Anglo-American pop scene of the time. Despite the stylistic differences, this record seems to share the same qualities as Regina Spektor's "Soviet Kitsch" or Björk's "Debut", blending a strong dose of personality with an already considerable maturity of writing and sound: still fresh, yet far removed from the embryonic stage of a debut. Electronics, pop, minimalism and a myriad of loops intertwine with whispered vocal harmonies, turning even the simplest melodies into a personal style that's instantly recognizable as Heap's own "signature". The tiptoeing music-box intro of "Headlock", which gives way to a forceful chorus, the simple yet subtly sophisticated "Goodnight And Go" (with Jeff Beck on guitar, returning the favor from a couple of years earlier), and the pure electro-pop of "The Walk" are the album's most accessible tracks, while something like "Closing In", propped up by layers of keyboards and hypnotic swirls of piano accompanying her voice through its higher registers, recalls moments from the glorious Tori Amos of "From The Choirgirl Hotel".

Following more in the footsteps of "Hide And Seek", "Just For Now" instead relies on multiple vocal layers and little else to carry a lyric and melody that are purely "Heap". Faint R&B touches mixed with a Röyksopp-style production make "I'm In Love With You" the most electro moment on the album, while "Loose Ends" suggests La Roux might well keep this record tucked away on a shelf in her bedroom. The closing "The Moment I Said It", the traditional end-of-album slow number, is the aching account of a relationship's end, shaped by a gorgeous piano crescendo and a falsetto so intense it almost feels like Laura Nyro's spirit hovering in the air. It's strange, though, that "Speeding Cars", a beautiful, simple song for voice and piano with a crystalline melody (and one of fans' favorites around the world), remained effectively unreleased, tucked away only on the Japanese edition of the album.

It's in her live performances, however, that we really see the versatility of the "Heap" persona. Always active on social media to stay in direct touch with her audience, she holds online auditions to pick a different opening act every night for her American shows, where she performs backed by a band — but it's when she's alone on stage that the intimacy of her songs truly comes alive. Standing or seated, with a laptop and various instruments arranged around her, Heap plays a bit of everything, improvising backing tracks with her voice or simply by clapping her hands (or, as she admits in one interview, slapping her own backside), singing her songs with passion exactly as she wants them sung, much as one imagines she does in the studio when working alone. To get a sense of her many performances from that period, the version of "Just For Now" recorded live for Indie 103.1fm is well worth seeking out.

Four years later, Ellipse fulfills the ambitions of an artist in search of a personal stylistic identity that doesn't disown her influences. Her vocal performances remain front and center, her half-sung, half-spoken delivery lends the whole record its emotional character, the moods stay pleasantly melodic and sweet without ever growing tiresome, and the choruses are steeped in chart-ready pop yet retain an introspective quality that makes the whole thing noteworthy.

While still balanced between the captivating and the predictable, Ellipse contains at least three or four standout tracks, such as the dream-pop of the opening "First Train Home", which unfurls like an electronic whisper, conjuring undefined places over a solid, far-from-generic compositional structure.

Greater attention to rhythm gives the record a more danceable feel overall, crystallizing in the infectious "Swoon", which, after a string of preparatory melodic lines, breaks open into one of the album's most exhilarating choruses — impossible not to get swept up in Imogen Heap's voice as it races through the words ("Let me be the Great Scott, tip top, pit stop…").

The view held by many critics that some tracks never rise above mere background music is often open to challenge; indeed, it would be wrong to overlook a few standout moments, like the refined "Little Bird", which hangs suspended on just a handful of post-modern electronic notes — here contemplation replaces more physical emotion for one of the album's most intense moments; the same magic recurs in "Between Sheets", an original love song built on a few notes of piano and bass, over which the voice drifts with dreamy, harmonic tones.

A touch of swing surfaces in "Earth" and "Bad Body Double", two fun pop songs in which Imogen Heap plays with her voice and its electronic manipulation, the result being an electro-futuristic take on Manhattan Transfer.

The album reveals new layers with every listen, which keeps the whole thing engaging; sure, "Canvas" and "Wait It Out" are pleasant enough and "Aha!" doesn't go much beyond naive provocation, but the album's only instrumental track, "The Fire", adds mystery and allure, while the closing ballad, "Half Life", is one of the most compelling pop performances of that year: bright piano notes, touches of violin, electronic whispers and gospel-tinged vocal shivers all blend together with real magic, achieving the kind of enchantment the artist has often chased and here finally renders sublime. Ellipse is a polished album, able to withstand accusations of a lack of originality; though it doesn't boast a hit single on the level of "Hide & Seek", it shows greater poise and solidity, drawing out a few smiles and a fair share of emotion.

From the future onward

Another fascinating project from the same period is her collaboration with director Thomas Ermacora on the environmental theme "Love The Earth". After editing almost a thousand videos submitted by amateurs and established filmmakers alike on the theme of "planet Earth" into eleven movements, Imogen Heap involved the audience at London's Royal Albert Hall, conducting an entire orchestra online as it followed music inspired by footage of nature's movements, projected onto a giant screen at the back of the stage.

At the same time, Imogen Heap has updated her image with a look far more eccentric and elaborate than in her early days, one that makes her stand out from the crowd — as shown by the recent outfit she wore to the Grammy Awards, made up of a "necklace" and a clear plastic bag wirelessly linked to Twitter, displaying her fans' messages live in real time; she wanted them by her side on the red carpet because, as she put it, "without them there would never have been the input for this record". Heap is in fact famous for holding live "Twitter sessions" with fans, chatting in real time while sitting at the piano and asking them what she should play. And it's precisely thanks to her Twitter fans that Imogen Heap began to find a way around the major obstacle of funding that plagues independent musicians who refuse to sign with a major label rather than submit to the compromises that so often come with it (and given her past experiences, you really can't blame her).

After mortgaging her house to record Speak For Yourself, picking up a couple of Grammys, earning universal critical acclaim and building a solid fanbase of active followers, Imogen has to announce the cancellation of her latest European tour because she would end up £20,000 in the red. The news sends a small shockwave through the industry, and disproves the widely held belief that, with record sales having collapsed, musicians today can make a living mainly from touring. "At the end of the month I need to feed myself too" – she confesses bluntly in a BBC interview – "and if I'd carried on with the tour I would have ended up losing money on it. I don't make money from records sold anymore, and with ticket prices set by companies like Ticketmaster, I can't afford to reach all the audience I'd like to. Everyone says I've been around for years now and assumes I'll always carry on making music, but unfortunately it's not that easy". She won't even consider compromising on the quality of her shows by cutting the budget or maybe going for a more acoustic set. Nor does she consider selling out by trying to write a new "Hide And Seek". And so, through Twitter, she discovers she has a fair number of fans in Jakarta, where she manages to organise, on her own, a concert for around four thousand people (a decent number by her standards), which sells out completely. In short, Heap cuts out the rather awkward middleman of a major label, preferring self-promotion instead. "If you're there, I'm there".

The announcement

"My fourth album will be completed within a year and a half starting today. Each song will be a mini-project written, recorded and released on a roughly two-month deadline (starting from April 2011). My fourth album starts here with you, on 14 March 2011. You are the 'spark' of its inspiration".

This is how Heap's new project came about, as original as it is ambitious, with few precedents in the record industry: an album in the making. It all begins with a request for sound material (via a link on her website) addressed to anyone interested in the project. What came in included slamming doors, plastic bottles used as maracas, and the gentle sound of fingers running along the slats of a blind. The result, "#heapsong1" (the working title used during the writing stage), is "Lifeline", released in mid-2011, of which there's already a video. The sonic thread seems to pick up from her last studio work, Ellipse, though it sounds less accessible and needs several listens to be fully appreciated. The sound of a match being struck at the start, a melancholy piano line, a minimal, metronome-like rhythm (with more than one nod to James Blake), and what one imagines are the sounds sent in by her exceptional "outside collaborators", sampled in the background, accompany a simple, effective melody that only shifts in tone when it's carried by a cello in the bridge.

It remains to be seen what new fruit will come to be part of this project, but once it's finished it will be interesting to listen back to this "Lifeline" to see what will have changed in the making, what three years mean from a musical point of view in the world of Imogen Heap, and above all what her audience will have been able to inspire in this singular example of an "interactive record".

2014: Finally, "Sparks"

It took longer than expected, but she finally got there. On 18 August 2014 Sparks finally sees the light of day, the fulfilment of a dream. For all the obvious eclecticism of the material, the album can be roughly divided into three parts. In London, Imogen followed the restoration work on an old Victorian garden, and "Neglected Space" is the evocative result, which at times recalls the vocal avant-garde of Laurie Anderson. Sitting on the roof of the Royal Festival Hall, facing the flowing Thames, she composed "You Know Where To Find Me" live at the piano, a song that rightfully ranks among the most beautiful she's ever written – swirling piano figures wrap around her voice in a mix of intimacy and grandeur with a powerful emotional impact. Together with deadmau5 she created "Telemiscommunications", a rarefied piece of post-dubstep that, within the album's sequencing, serves to ease off the centrifugal effect a little.

Later, during a stay in India, she wrote a song together with Vishal-Shekhar with the help of the Dewarists, "Minds Without Fear", a sort of melting pot of an Indian melody and a wall of cold synthesizers (some will be reminded of "Psychobabble" from her Frou Frou days). She climbed the mountains of Bhutan, and took part in making the documentary "The Happiest Place", which tells the story of electricity arriving in the remote village of Sakteng; "Climb To Sakteng" and "The Cycle Song" are two instrumental sketches composed using field recordings gathered during filming, filtered through her now-recognisable electronic delicacy. She also spent a month in Hangzhou, China, where – with the help of as many as 250 people! – she set up microphones and cameras at various points around the city to record an entire day unfolding, in order to "capture its spirit"; the result is "Xizi She Knows".

From her innate love of technology, meanwhile, came the most distinctive songs. A series of free-themed thoughts gathered online inspired the sweet, music-box-like steps of "Propeller Seed" (recorded in 3D – headphones are recommended for listening). Beyond all ambition, though, was the creation of the Mi.Mu gloves, a pair of interactive gloves wirelessly connected to a sonic map of the room; "Me The Machine" is Imogen transformed into a robot, capable of emitting electric pulses (similar to the sound of an Ondes Martenot) with a simple flick of the wrist.

And there's more: in collaboration with Intel she's also putting together an app that will soon be able to adapt "Run-Time" to the rhythm and pace of the wearer's footsteps while jogging – at the moment, the track is the closest thing to dance music Imogen has ever dared to make.

Of course, the journey of Sparks hasn't been all plain sailing. I might be speculating here, but as time went on Imogen must have realised there was a significant "flaw" in the concept behind the project: if she really had released (and sold) every song one by one as planned, the surprise factor of the finished album would surely have been lost (and with it, perhaps, the chance to sign with a major label if she ever needed to?). The fact is that over the past year the releases became noticeably scarcer. As a fully self-financed independent artist, Imogen had to spend months looking for the best way to get her album onto shelves without losing her house in the process (she'd already come close to that, back in the days of Speak For Yourself, let's not forget). The compromise is the usual one: use her own label – Megaphonic Recordings – in England, but rely on RCA for distribution in America.

Not only that. She also became fixated on creating an extremely elaborate Box Set packed with curiosities – double vinyl, a photo album, documentaries, interactive cards and so on – which caused her a mountain of logistical headaches, contributing to the over-a-year delay with which Sparks arrives today. And among other things, she also broke up with her boyfriend – apparently the director who had made the videos for the first songs released – but found another one, with whom she's now expecting her first child. The result: a glowing mother-to-be, and video quality that took a nosedive.

Sparks is many things. First of all, it's by far the most eclectic and elaborate album of her career, a travel diary put through the centrifuge, yet one that somehow holds together thanks to its creator's expert hand, and shows off a talent that's constantly on the move. After all, by staying on the fringes of the traditional record industry circuits, Imogen has earned herself the luxury of being able to experiment and range freely as she pleases, without necessarily having to write a new "Hide And Seek". Her fourth album in almost 20 years of her career (re)confirms her as one of England's most distinctive electro-songwriters.

But there's more. Sparks is the crowning achievement of a path that shows its creator's indomitable tenacity. In an era when so many lament the way the internet has upended the rules of the record industry as we once knew it, Imogen prefers to grab technology by the horns and bend it to her will (see this interview with Virgin Disruptors). She invents workarounds, self-finances, and stays in close contact with her audience, because she knows full well that everything depends on them. And when she really can't manage, she throws up her hands and bluntly admits defeat. By her own account, she's far happier now than she was when she was signed to Almo Sounds.

At a time when so many artists live in fear of disappearing after just one record, Imogen Heap has the ability to inspire confidence in the future. Sure, hers is just one of many possible stories, but who knows – in a sense, might she be opening up a path towards a new way of conceiving (and consuming) music?

Contribution by Gianfranco Marmoro (“Ellipse”)

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