TAS In Session: Imogen Heap
Twitter aficionado, Frou Frou veteran and solo artist Imogen Heap has returned after a four year hiatus - and has hit the ground running. Her third album, Ellipse, made a startling debut at No. 5 on the Billboard album charts, selling 48,000 copies in its first week alone. In addition, the two-time Grammy nominee has become the artist-of-choice for scores of film and television projects, from "The Chronicles of Narnia" to "Gossip Girl." She's also collaborated with a wide variety of diverse musicians, like experimental electronica composer Nitin Sawhney, dance group Temposhark and even Jon Bon Jovi.
But the road to the release of Ellipse, the follow up to 2005's Speak For Yourself, has had a hiccup or two.
The Essex-based Heap discovered back in July that a journalist from a UK tabloid had apparently put his unopened, watermarked copy of Ellipse up for sale on eBay a good month before the album was to be released. Via her trusty Twitter account - the singer ranks in the top 125 of all people followed on the social network service with nearly a million followers - she urged her fans to bid on it, driving the price up to about £10m (about $16m) before eBay shut down the sale.
When Heap dropped by The Alternate Side's Studio A to chat with our own Alisa Ali, she had much to discuss about her striking new album which Heap composed on Garage Band. Throughout Ellipse's two year development, Heap vigorously documented its progress via blogs, tweets and a series of YouTube posts (expect much of the footage to eventually emerge on a DVD).
Alisa offers her preamble to the mix:
"Imogen Heap's latest record was a labor of love. She traveled around the world on a writing trip, turned her family home into a recording studio, and put her album together on her own. Aside from doing all the vocals, she also played all of the instruments herself, often incorporating unusual sounds like banging on light fixtures, rustling her own bedsheets, and inviting family and friends over to stomp on the floors.
"She shared the progress of the making of the new album, 'Ellipse' with her fans through videos (vlogs) that she frequently posted, explaining that it was just the best way to explain to people what it is that she actually does. So when Imogen says that she's in the process of 'mixing' a song, her fans can really understand that concept. Not quite the same as baking a cake."
But, most delightfully, Imogen also sat at The Alternate Side's studio piano and played new songs, like her single "First Train Home," just for The Alternate Side - and you, of course.
