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Imogen Heap

English musician and producer (born 1977) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Imogen Heap
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Imogen Jennifer Jane Heap (/ˈɪmədʒən ˈhiːp/ IM-ə-jən HEEP; born 9 December 1977) is an English musician, singer, songwriter and record producer. She is considered a pioneer in pop and electropop music.

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Heap classically trained in piano, cello, and clarinet starting at a young age. She began writing songs at the age of 13 and taught herself music production while attending boarding school. After being discovered by manager Mickey Modern while attending the BRIT School, Heap signed to independent record label Almo Sounds at the age of 18 and later began working with experimental pop band Acacia. She released her debut album, an alternative rock record, I Megaphone, in 1998. In early 2002, Heap and English record producer Guy Sigsworth formed the electronic duo Frou Frou and released their only album to date, Details (2002).

Her second studio album, Speak for Yourself, was released in 2005 on her own label, Megaphonic Records, and was certified gold in the United States and Canada. The album spawned three singles: "Headlock", which became her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 20 years after its release; "Goodnight and Go", which became her highest-charting single as a lead artist on the UK Singles Chart; and "Hide and Seek", which was certified gold in the United States and gained popularity after being used in the Fox teen drama television series The O.C.. Heap's third studio album, Ellipse (2009), peaked in the top five of the Billboard 200 chart and received mostly positive reviews. This was followed by her fourth studio album, Sparks (2014). In 2017, she reunited with Sigsworth as part of Frou Frou.

Heap developed the Mi.Mu Gloves, a line of musical gloves, as well as a blockchain-based music-sharing program, Mycelia. She also composed the music for the West End and Broadway play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Over the course of her career, she has received two Grammy Awards, one Ivor Novello Award, and one Drama Desk Award. In July 2019, Heap was awarded an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music.[2]

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Early life

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Imogen Jennifer Jane Heap[3] was born on 9 December 1977[4][5] in Havering, Greater London.[6] She was named after British composer Imogen Holst, as her mother wanted Heap to become a cellist like Holst.[7] Her mother, an art therapist, and father, a construction rock retailer, separated when she was twelve years old.[8] She was raised in a 200-year-old house in Essex near Romford; she later bought the house when it was put on the market in 2006 and converted its basement into a studio.[9] When she was one year old, she was diagnosed with osteomyelitis in her left leg.[10] She played music from an early age, first learning to play the piano at age two due to "wanting attention" as a middle child and realizing, according to her, that "it was something [she] could make a lot of noise with".[11][12] She has also stated that "everyone was playing music" in her family home growing up and that she rarely listened to the radio.[13]

She did not enjoy playing the music of classical composers such as Bach and Beethoven, and would instead attempt to play in their style to convince her parents she was practicing their music.[14] As a child, she recorded music by recording herself playing piano on cassette, then recording herself again singing over it.[15] At around age 10, she composed Christmas carols for her school's choir.[14] She soon began taking lessons and became classically trained in several instruments including piano, cello and clarinet while attending Friends School, a private, Quaker-run boarding school in Saffron Walden.[16][17] She has stated that she was "everyone's worst nightmare" while there, spending much of her time smoking and drinking.[10] She performed frequently at school recitals in order to avoid being punished for bad behavior.[13]

Due to being placed a year above children her age, Heap has stated she did not get along with many people from the school and spent most of her time in the music room practising piano.[12] She stated, "In boarding school ... I was mocked about the clothes I wore, the way I looked, whatever. People there really did regard me as some kind of freak from the middle of nowhere. And these things do matter a lot when you are sixteen, seventeen."[18] Her music teacher, who she has said considered her "really irritating", would send her to the school's music technology room as punishment, where she taught herself how to sample music.[10][8] At age twelve, she also taught herself how to use Cubase on an Atari ST computer at Friends School.[12] By the age of thirteen, she had begun writing songs.[3] At age fifteen, she started using reel-to-reel recording to record her music and using a home computer to program it.[15] She eventually got expelled from the school after cursing at her matron but, as they needed her to perform at the end-of-year concert, lived with the headmistress and played piano for the rest of the year.[10]

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Career

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1995–1996: Almo Sounds and Acacia

Heap started studying at the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology in Croydon, South London at age 16, where she first began regularly singing and writing songs due to loneliness.[10] There, she recorded her first song to feature her vocals, "Missing You", which was released on the BRIT School's Class of 1994 album and earned her attention from manager Mickey Modern after he saw her performance at a talent showcase.[14][12] After being introduced to Nik Kershaw by Modern, Heap recorded demos which were taken to Rondor Music. A few months later, Heap signed her first record contract, aged 18, with independent record label Almo Sounds.[16][19]

In 1996, Heap began working with British experimental pop band Acacia, which featured her future collaborator Guy Sigsworth. While never a full member of the band, she was a guest vocalist and contributed to various Acacia singles and album tracks.[20] Her first major live solo performance was as part of the line-up for the 1996 Prince's Trust Concert in Hyde Park, where she played in between performances by Eric Clapton and the Who.[21][22]

1997–1999: I Megaphone

Heap's debut commercial single, "Getting Scared", was released in 1997 and included on the soundtrack for the 1998 horror film I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.[23] She released her debut album, the alternative rock record I Megaphone, on 16 June 1998, through Almo, with its songs "Getting Scared", "Shine", and "Come Here Boy" released as singles in the United Kingdom.[24] The record was made with several producers, including Sigsworth, Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, and David Kahne.[18] It featured personal lyricism and critics compared it heavily to the works of fellow female singer-songwriters Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Alanis Morisette, and Fiona Apple.[11][18] She toured the album in the United States and Europe from 1998 to 1999, though Almo cut funding for her tour in the United Kingdom and used the money to promote I Megaphone.[20][8] I Megaphone received airplay on various American radio stations but was a commercial failure, as Almo did little to promote it.[13] Soon after its release, Almo Sounds was acquired by Universal, forcing its artists to either move to other labels or be released. Heap was dropped from the label, leaving her without a record contract.[14][16]

During her time as an unsigned artist, Heap appeared on two singles: "Meantime", a track written by her former Acacia colleagues, Sigsworth and Alexander Nilere, for the soundtrack to the independent British film G:MT – Greenwich Mean Time,[citation needed] and "Blanket", a 1998 collaboration with British hip hop band Urban Species. "Blanket" was Heap's first charting single, reaching number 56 on the UK Singles Chart.[25] The song would later appear in a 2005 sex tape of Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst.[26]

2000–2003: Formation of Frou Frou and Details

Main article: Frou Frou (band)

In 2000, Heap and Sigsworth formed the electronic duo Frou Frou, with plans to record an album featuring a different singer, rapper, or poet on each song.[8][20] She described the formation of the duo as "very organic and spontaneous".[27] Heap also appeared as a featured vocalist on two songs—"Dirty Mind" and "Rollin' and Tumblin'"—on the 2001 album You Had It Coming by English guitarist Jeff Beck.[28]

On 15 July 2002, Frou Frou released their first and only album, Details, through Island Records and MCA Records.[29] She stated that the two had not planned on making a follow-up album at the time due to their both being "kind of free spirits".[30] The lead single of Details, "Breathe In", was released to modern rock and college rock stations soon after the album's release, with a music video starring Robin Tunney. It was described as their breakout hit.[31] The 2003 music video for their song "The Dumbing Down of Love" was directed by Joel Peissig and won the award for best video at RESFest.[32][33] The album's song "Let Go", which was originally written for the 2002 film Phone Booth but did not end up being used, became one of the duo's most popular songs after being included on the soundtrack of Zach Braff's 2004 film Garden State, which was released through Epic Records in August of that year and won a Grammy Award.[23][34][35][30] Its appearance in the film also brought Frou Frou to a wider international audience.[36]

For Drowned in Sound, Andy Thomas wrote in a review of Details that its songs were "good, if not overly ambitious" and "pleasant enough to do the washing up to".[37] In a four-and-a-half out of five star review, Alex Henderson of AllMusic praised Details for its "attractive" production, "solid songwriting", and "expressive vocals".[38] Heap later said that Island Records "did an absolutely terrible job of marketing [Details]" due to being more focused on promoting Sugababes at the time.[29] The album sold poorly and Island dropped Frou Frou from the label but offered Heap a solo deal. She turned it down, stating in 2006, "If you had taken a shirt into a dry cleaners and they burned it, would you then go, 'Thanks very much. I'll bring in my other dry cleaning tomorrow'?"[8] The two soon disbanded the group. Two years later, Chris Douridas, a DJ for KCRW and the music supervisor for the 2004 animated film Shrek 2, reached out to Sigsworth about recording a cover of Bonnie Tyler's 1984 song "Holding Out for a Hero" for the film. Sigsworth wanted Heap to sing on the cover and the two soon reunited as Frou Frou to record a rendition of the song, which appeared in the film's closing credits.[36]

Heap recorded a rendition of the song "I'm a Lonely Little Petunia" for the seventh episode of the fourth season of the HBO drama series Six Feet Under, which premiered in August 2004.[39] Her rendition later appeared as the album closer for the 2005 soundtrack album Six Feet Under, Vol. 2: Everything Ends.[40] In September 2004, she performed at Time for Change, a benefit concert advocating for Americans living in the United Kingdom to submit absentee ballots for the 2004 United States presidential election.[41]

2005–2007: Speak for Yourself

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Heap performing at Bush Hall in 2005

After Frou Frou were dropped from Island Records, Heap had accrued £10 thousand in credit card debt.[8] She was denied bank loans due to not being employed and, afraid of signing another record deal, she remortgaged her flat in Waterloo, London to finance the making of her next studio album.[22] Heap used the money to book a session to master the album one year ahead of its recording, to rent a studio at Atomic Studios in London (which had previously been inhabited by Dizzee Rascal), and to purchase all of the equipment to make it.[42][10] Partly in response to her frustration with being considered "just the singer" in Frou Frou, Heap aimed to create the album without any outside assistance.[8]

In May 2005, Heap released "Hide and Seek", the lead single from her forthcoming album, with a music video directed by Peissig. The song began gaining traction in the United Kingdom when it received praise from radio DJs Jo Whiley and Zane Lowe.[10] It brought her to fame internationally after it was used to score the season two finale of the Fox teen drama television series The O.C. on the same day as its release; it was also included as the closing track of The OC Mix 5, a soundtrack album for the series released by Warner Bros. Records in November 2005.[43][15][44] Its appearance in the series caused it to become especially popular on the iTunes Store and it peaked in the top-40 of the Billboard Digital Songs chart, eventually receiving a gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).[45][46][8] A Saturday Night Live parody of the scene in 2007, which also featured the song, brought the song to further prominence and made it into a meme online.[47] It also received critical praise, with Kelefa Sanneh calling it "the best thing" on her second studio album and Margaret Farrell of Stereogum listing it as Heap's best song in 2018.[48][23] It went on to be sampled in the 2009 song "Whatcha Say" by American singer Jason Derulo, which topped the Billboard Hot 100.[49]

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Heap in 2006

Heap self-released her second studio album, Speak for Yourself, through her newly-formed independent record label Megaphonic Records on 18 July 2005. The album was entirely written, produced, recorded, and arranged by her. Except for a guitar riff played by Beck on the album track "Goodnight and Go" and trumpet played by Arve Henriksen on several tracks, she also played all instruments on the album and designed its packaging and artwork.[10] RCA Records later licensed the album to be released on 1 November 2005 in the United States, where it peaked at number 145 on the Billboard 200 album chart in February 2006 and had sold more than 120 thousand units by May of that year, while Sony Records licensed its release throughout Europe.[50][22][51][14] Speak for Yourself has been described as her breakout album.[47] It received mostly positive reviews from critics, with particular praise for Heap's voice, songwriting, and innovation.[52] However, some criticized its production for sounding too polished and overornate.[53][54] "Goodnight and Go" was released in May 2006 through Sony BMG as Speak for Yourself's second single and debuted at number 56 on the UK Singles Chart.[55][56] It was followed by "Headlock" in October 2006, which was released through White Rabbit, a sublabel of Sony BMG run by Nick Raphael that later merged into Epic Records UK in 2007.[57][58]

In August 2005, Heap appeared on the soundtrack for the 2005 romantic comedy film Just Like Heaven, performing a cover of the song "Spooky" by American band Classics IV.[59] In November 2005, Heap wrote and produced the song "Can't Take It In" for the soundtrack of the fantasy film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which was released one month later, after a soundtrack appearance by Dido fell through and the film's music supervisor needed a replacement.[60][61][8] The song was later nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Song Written For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media at the 49th Grammy Awards in 2007, where she was also nominated as Best New Artist, and for the World Soundtrack Award for Best Original Song in 2006.[62][63] Also in November of that year, she performed at a benefit concert for the Stop the War Coalition, which was headlined by Rachid Taha and Brian Eno and also featured Nitin Sawhney and Mick Jones of The Clash.[64][65]

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Heap performing at Coachella in 2006

She went on a three-week-long tour of the United States, which included a performance at Coachella, in 2006.[10] Heap recorded an a cappella cover of the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah" for the season three finale of The O.C., which premiered in May 2006.[66] By mid-2006, Heap was one of the most popular musical acts on MySpace, with more than one and a half million profile users.[10] She was variously referred to in the media as the first "download diva" for her robust online presence and independent success online in 2006.[67] Heap's music was used as the soundtrack for Pool (No Water), a one-act physical theatre play written by Mark Ravenhill and originally performed by Frantic Assembly, which opened at the Drum Theatre in Plymouth in September 2006.[68][69] At the 2006 MTVU Woodie Awards, which was voted on by college students, Heap tied with Arctic Monkeys for the most nominations with three (for Best Emerging Artist, Most Original Artist, and Most Downloaded for "Hide and Seek"), though she won none.[70][71] She wrote and performed the song "Glittering Cloud", which was based on the plague of locusts, as part of an event called the Margate Exodus sponsored by Artangel in November 2006, where ten artists each performed one song based on one of the Plagues of Egypt in Margate.[72] The songs were compiled in the 2006 album Plague Songs.[73]

Heap toured the United States in late 2006 with beatboxer Kid Beyond and singer-songwriter Levi Weaver as opening acts.[74][75] By 2007, hers was the fourth most-friended MySpace profile throughout the United Kingdom, following Product Red, Gorillaz, and Bullet for My Valentine.[76] I Megaphone was rereleased in late 2006 and, in February 2007, she performed two shows—one in Los Angeles and the other in New York City—of material from the album.[77][78] She was also featured as a guest during Beck's performance at Ronnie Scott's in November 2007 and appeared on two songs from its accompanying live album, Live at Ronnie Scott's, released in 2008, and in its DVD, released in 2009.[79][80]

2008–2010: Ellipse

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Heap performing in Liverpool, England, in 2010

Heap was featured on English band Temposhark's song "Not That Big" from their debut 2008 studio album The Invisible Line and on Nitin Sawhney's song "Bring It Home" from his 2008 studio album London Undersound.[81][82] In October 2008, Heap gave a musical performance in the anti-human trafficking documentary and rockumentary film Call + Response, directed by Justin Dillon.[83]

Heap posted a total of 40 video blogs during the making of Ellipse, her third studio album, starting in 2007. She recorded the album in the basement of her childhood home in Essex, using sounds from around the house as instruments, while its name was inspired by the house's elliptical shape.[84] Its lead single "First Train Home" was released in July 2009 and premiered on Stereogum.[85] After completing Ellipse, she held a contest on Flickr for fans to submit photos to use as the album's artwork in exchange for a small cash prize.[86] In July, prior to the album's release, an advance promotional copy was listed on eBay. After Heap tweeted about her frustration over it, the bidding price was raised to over £10 million by fans and the listing was soon taken down by eBay.[87][9]

The album's release was pushed back multiple times. These included Heap being asked to perform at the annual event PopTech in October 2008. During the event, she premiered one of her album's songs, "Wait it Out".[citation needed] On 17 August 2009, Heap made the entire album Ellipse available for live streaming via her webpage.[citation needed] Ellipse was released in the United Kingdom on 24 August 2009[citation needed] and in the United States on 25 August 2009 through RCA Records.[88] She began touring to promote the album in late August 2009. By September 2009, she was the 117th most-followed user overall on Twitter, with more than 960 thousand followers.[86] Heap received two nominations for the 49th Annual Grammy Awards, where she won the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for her engineering work on Ellipse, making her the first female artist to win the award.[89][90][91]

2011–2014: Sparks

In March 2011, Heap began working on her then-unnamed fourth studio album and revealed that she would be writing and releasing a new single for the album once every three months, beginning with the recording and release of the album's lead single, then released under the working title "Heapsong1" and eventually released commercially as "Lifeline", via Ustream.[92][93] "Propeller Seeds", the second single, followed in July 2011.[94]

The third single from the album, "Neglected Space", was created as part of Heap's project with charity organization Clear Village to restore a walled garden in Bedfords Park in October 2011.[95] She starred in the debut episode of the MTV India musical reality television series The Dewarists, where she recorded "Minds Without Fear", her fourth single from Sparks, with Indian production duo Vishal–Shekhar.[96][97] Both "Neglected Space" and "Minds Without Fear" were released in October 2011.

Heap recorded her song "Xizi She Knows" during a trip to Hangzhou, which was partially funded by PRS for Music and the British Council. It was released as the fifth single from the album in February 2012.[98] "You Know Where to Find Me" was then released as the album's sixth single.[23] She collaborated with Canadian record producer Deadmau5 on the song "Telemiscommunications", which was included on his 2012 studio album, Album Title Goes Here, and released as the eighth single from the album in March 2013 alongside an animated music video.[99] Her single "Run-Time" was made using a generative music app, which she designed with RjDj and Intel that created custom music for running, and was released in July 2014 with a music video.[100]

The title of Sparks, Heap's fourth studio album, was announced in September 2013, and the album was released on 18 August 2014 through Megaphonic Records.[101][102] It debuted at number 40 on the UK Albums Chart, at number 21 on the Billboard 200, and at number one on Billboard's Dance/Electronic Albums chart.[103][104] Its deluxe boxset was nominated for the AIM Independent Music Award for Special Catalogue Release of the Year and for the Grammy Award for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package in 2015.[105][106]

2015–2023: Harry Potter and collaborations

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Heap at the World Intellectual Property Organization's Conference on the Global Digital Content Market in 2016

In October 2015, Heap released the single "Tiny Human" using her blockchain-based platform Mycelia.[107] Sales of "Tiny Human" via Ethereum smart contracts as of October 2017 were £30,000.[108][109] After being contacted by movement director Steven Hoggett, Heap reworked and composed music from her catalogue to be used as the music in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the eighth installment of the Harry Potter series in the form of a West End play that opened in the summer of 2016.[110][111] For her work on the play, she received several award nominations, including for the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Music and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Score (Broadway or Off-Broadway), and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play.[112][113][114][115]

Heap co-wrote and produced the Taylor Swift song "Clean", which appeared as the closer to Swift's fifth studio album 1989 and led to her being part of the production team that won Album of the Year at the 58th Grammy Awards.[116] She returned to produce the re-recording of the song for 1989 (Taylor's Version), released in 2023.[117] Heap was one of the artists featured in an episode of the 2016 PBS docuseries Soundbreaking and she narrated and composed music for the 2016 documentary Crossing Bhutan, which premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.[118][119] Also in 2016, she was commissioned by French advertising agency BETC and British company Cow & Gate, in collaboration with researchers from Goldsmiths, University of London, to help write a song which would be proven to "make babies happy", which was eventually titled "The Happy Song".[120] The track was engineered through several months of scientific testing and was released in October 2016.[121]

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Heap demonstrating the Mi.Mu gloves at the 2018 Web Summit

Heap wrote, produced and recorded the song "Magic Me" as the score for the 2017 animated short film Escape, which premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival in April of that year.[122] Heap also recorded "The Quiet" as the end credits song for the 2017 Square Enix video game The Quiet Man.[123] She performed "Hide and Seek" at the benefit concert and television special One Love Manchester in Manchester in June 2017. Her performance was praised by critics as "powerful" and "melancholy".[124][125][126] The following month, she was featured on the song "We Drift On" by British singer-songwriter Dan Black from his second studio album Do Not Revenge.[127] She announced in November 2017 that she would be reuniting Frou Frou with Guy Sigsworth and would be embarking on the Mycelia World Tour with him to promote the release of Mycelia's Creative Passport program.[128] In March 2018, she was awarded the Inspiration Award at the 2018 Music Producers Guild Awards.[129]

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Heap at The Town Hall in 2019

On 18 September 2018, Heap released The Music of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Four Contemporary Suites, a condensed soundtrack album of the play.[130] An interview with her appeared in the Alex Winter-directed documentary Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain in November 2018.[131] The Mycelia World Tour began in Europe in 2018, while the North American leg began in April 2019, marking her first North American tour in nine years and her first tour as part of Frou Frou since 2003.[132] That same month, she and Sigsworth released "Guitar Song (Live)", their first Frou Frou song in 15 years, through We Are Hear.[133] She gave a lecture at Boston Calling Music Festival in May 2019.[134] In June 2019, she announced that she planned to release an album consisting of collaborations in 2020, the lead single of which would be one of three versions of "The Quiet".[135] She also performed on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts series that same month.[136]

She hosted the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony in January 2020.[137] In April 2020, she appeared as a main artist on the commercial re-release of the 2009 song "I'm God" by Italian-American record producer Clams Casino, which samples Heap's song "Just for Now", and released the single "Phase and Flow" as part of a collaboration with IBM.[138][139] The following month, she performed during Royal Albert Hall's Royal Albert Home virtual concert series.[140] Heap gave a livestreamed closing performance for the Virtual Design Festival held by Dezeen in July 2020.[141] During the COVID-19 pandemic, she launched a self-titled app for fans to view unreleased material and demos and participate in listening parties with her through Discord for a monthly fee, and began work on a project called "Augmented Imogen", meant to be an AI version of herself.[107] She released the single "Last Night of an Empire" in December 2020.[142] In late March 2022, Imogen Heap partnered with Symphonic Distribution to re-release previous material, including a handful of Frou Frou demos, which will compile into the Off Cuts release. The first single "A New Kind of Love (Demo)" was released on 8 April.[143]

2024–present: The Living Song

As part of a new project called The Living Song, Heap released the first part as a single named "What Have You Done To Me?" on 1 November 2024[144] "Headlock" found renewed popularity on TikTok in October 2024, initially due to its use in video edits of the horror video game Mouthwashing. In January 2025, it became her first career entry on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, debuting at number 100.[145]

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Film

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After touring for nearly two years straight for her album Speak for Yourself, Heap continued her travels, this time with only a laptop and video camera on hand as she began her writing trip for her next album. Nine weeks later she returned to the UK with the beginnings of the award-winning Ellipse and footage (as requested by a fan to film the making of the album) from its quiet beginning. Moving to Essex, Heap hired Justine Pearsall to document the creation of the album. The film documents the creation of the album and the renovation of Heap's childhood home, including turning her old playroom into her new home studio. Everything In-Between: The Story of Ellipse was released in November 2010.

On 5 November 2010 at the Royal Albert Hall, Heap conducted an orchestra including her friends and family as they performed an original piece composed by Heap and orchestrated by Andrew Skeet. Heap also worked with London Contemporary Voices at this time, a scratch choir formed for this concert, which continues as a new choir in its own right. It was the score to the concept film Love The Earth, for which fans were invited to submit video footage highlighting all the qualities of nature to be selected and edited into a film. This performance was broadcast live worldwide.[146]

In March, for the Birds Eye View Film Festival at the Southbank Centre, Heap, in collaboration with Andrew Skeet, composed an a cappella choral score for the first-ever surrealist film The Seashell and the Clergyman (Germaine Dulac, 1927), with the Holst Singers, a programme repeated at the Reverb Festival at the Roundhouse in February 2012 and in the Sage, Gateshead.

Heap performed in the Film and Music Arena at Latitude Festival in 2011.

In 2014, filmmaker Christopher Ian Smith[147] made Cumulus,[148] an experimental documentary exploring key elements of Heap's background, personality and music practice. Crafted entirely out of social media content and data created by Heap and her fans, Cumulus explores Imogen's digital footprint and identity as well as her relationship with fans. The film is available to view online.[149]

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Other endeavours

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The Hideaway

In 2006, Heap opened a residential recording studio called The Hideaway at The Round House in Havering, which was also her family home and owned by her father.[150]

Mi.Mu

Heap demonstrating the Mi.Mu gloves in a 2014 video for Dezeen

In July 2011, Heap unveiled a pair of in-development, wired musical gloves at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. They were originally developed by Heap with Tom Mitchell, a University of the West of England, Bristol lecturer in music systems, and designed and sewn by Rachel Freire, a costume designer, over the course of the prior two and a half years.[151][152] They were inspired by another pair of musical gloves developed by engineer Elly Jessop at MIT which Heap had witnessed during a visit to the university's Media Lab. Early versions of Heap's gloves had issues with latency and accuracy.[151] In an interview, Heap stated, "The gloves help me embody those sounds which are hidden inside the computer, for me to physicalise them and bring them out so that I can play them and the audience members will understand what I am doing—rather than fiddling around on a keyboard and mouse which is not very clear—I could just be doing my emails."[153]

The gloves, which eventually came to be known as the Mi.Mu gloves (a name derived from an abbreviation of "me" and "music"),[91] are made from the material Yulex and consist of a hardware board at the wrist developed by Seb Madgwick with an inertial measurement unit used to determine the speed and orientation of the hands, flex sensors over the knuckles, a haptic motor, a removable battery, open palms and LED lights in between the thumb and forefinger which indicate whether or not the user is recording.[154][151] Open Sound Control data is sent to a computer, which can perform a number of different actions, including adjusting volume, recording loops and filtering sound.[155][156] The gloves also come with a custom software called Glover that can be integrated with music production apps such as Ableton Live and Pro Tools, and use 802.11 Wi-Fi.[157][151]

Heap recorded her song "Me the Machine" using an early version of the gloves, debuting the single during a livestream on Earth Day in 2012.[154] Also in 2012, she showcased the Mi.Mu gloves on an episode of the BBC television series Dara Ó Briain's Science Club.[158] Heap began crowdfunding to produce more pairs of the gloves in April 2014 on Kickstarter, with a goal of £200,000, but the campaign failed to meet its target. However, the Mi.Mu project found investors who collaborated with Heap's team to continue to develop the gloves.[153][159] An early investor and user of the gloves was American singer Ariana Grande, who used the gloves during her second concert tour, The Honeymoon Tour, in 2015. In April 2019, the Mi.Mu gloves became publicly available for pre-order.[151] Popular Science included the Mi.Mu gloves on their list of the 100 greatest innovations of 2019.[157]

Mycelia

In October 2015, Heap released the single Tiny Human using the blockchain-based platform Mycelia, which she created as a decentralized musical database for artists to share their music on and enforce smart contracts using Ethereum.[107][160][161] Mycelia's Creative Passport programme is a personalised profile for artists not signed to a major label.[128][107][162]

Heap and Guy Sigsworth reunited as Frou Frou for Heap's 2017 Mycelia Tour. They released an EP of unreleased Frou Frou demos for Details' 20th anniversary in 2022.[163]

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Artistry

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I just love crafting and shaping sounds. Actually, many of the sounds that I work with start off as organic instruments – guitar, piano, clarinet, etc. But I do love the rigidity of electronic drums... I would record live drums, and then I would spend a day editing them to take the life out of them. I like to breathe my own life into these sounds, and I do try to keep the "air" in the music.

—Imogen Heap[27]

In the late 1990s, Heap's music was largely alternative rock.[24] However, after forming and subsequently disbanding the electronic duo Frou Frou, whose work on their sole album to date, Details, was mainly alternative pop and electropop, her music became primarily based in pop, specifically electropop, art pop and synth-pop.[164][165][166][24] She has written, produced and engineered most of her music on her own.[90] She has also stated that she rarely listens to music, but draws inspiration from TED conferences.[167]

Heap plays a number of instruments, including piano, clarinet, cello, guitar, drums and the array mbira.[7] She extensively uses manipulated electronic sounds as an integral part of her music. She also mixes ambient sound into her music and has commented that "certain sounds give the music a width and a space, and that's important."[27] CNN stated that Heap is known for "her distinctive fusion of soft acoustic sounds, electronica and tech".[153]

Heap has said that she "really [doesn't] like writing lyrics" and called them "a pain in the ass", describing herself as feeling "much more" comfortable producing.[14][53] Heap states that her song lyrics come from personal experience, but are not straightforwardly confessional. She has stated, "Most of the time, the lyrics are kind of like my secret messages to my friends or my boyfriend or my mum or my dad. I would never tell them that these songs are about them or which specific lyric is about somebody. Often, when I sit down to write a lyric, it is in the heat of the moment, and something has just happened."[27]

Heap's frog-themed outfit at the 49th Annual Grammy Awards has been included in several lists of the most "outrageous" Grammys outfits of all time.[168][169][170][171]

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Legacy

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Heap has been regarded as influential in pop music, specifically in electropop and for using technology in her music. NPR's Lindsay Kimbell also referred to Heap as a "pioneer of electronic pop" in 2018.[165] Billboard called Heap an "electro-pop innovator".[172] In 2018, Stereogum's Margaret Farrell referred to Heap as "pop's unsung pioneer" and "an electronic pop mastermind", going on to describe her as "a mystical force that has loomed over pop music for nearly two decades".[23] In 2019, The New York Times similarly called Heap a "pop pioneer" whose work "has established her as an innovator in musical technology".[173] For Paper, Matt Moen called Heap "the Nikola Tesla of pop music" in that "[her] influence in the field of pop has largely gone unappreciated in her own time".[15] Various outlets, including NPR and New Statesman, have called Heap a "tech pioneer".[107][174] Patrick Ryan of USA Today wrote that Heap "pioneered" the subgenre of folktronica, which combines elements of folk music and electronica.[175] She is also known for her contributions to film and television soundtracks.[10][51]

Heap has been cited as a musical inspiration by a number of artists and groups, including Ariana Grande,[176] Bebe Rexha,[177] Ellie Goulding,[178] Kacey Musgraves,[179] Pentatonix,[180][181] Chloe Bailey,[182] Empress Of,[183] Dawn Richard,[184] Jamila Woods,[185] Muna,[186] Mree,[187] Woodes,[188] Ben Hopkins,[189] Matthew Parker,[190] Red Moon,[191] Michelle Chamuel,[192] Chaz Cardigan,[172] Laura Doggett,[193] GoodLuck,[194] Kool Kojak,[195] and Stars and Rabbit.[196] Heap's songs have also been covered by artists including Pentatonix[197] and Kelly Clarkson,[198] and have been sampled by artists including Grande, Jason Derulo, Wiz Khalifa,[199] Mac Miller, Clams Casino, Lil B,[200] Ryan Hemsworth, Deniro Farrar,[201] Suicideboys,[202] ASAP Rocky, MellowHype, Trinidad James[203] and XV.[49] The sampling of her songs has been considered influential in the subgenre of cloud rap.[204]

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Charity

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In 2008, Heap participated in an album called Songs for Tibet: The Art of Peace, which is an initiative to support Tibet, Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso and to underline the human rights situation in Tibet. The album was released on 5 August via iTunes and on 19 August in music stores around the world.[205] On 12 October 2008, Heap participated in "Run 10k: Cancer Research UK", placing fifth of the women in the actual run and raising over £1000 for the cause with the help of her fans.

In 2010 Heap began performing improvised pieces at shows, asking for donations for charity after the show to download the song.[citation needed]

In 2011, Heap played a benefit concert in Christchurch, New Zealand, to help rebuild the Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti High School following a severe earthquake which destroyed a large portion of the city earlier in the year. The concert was held at the Burnside High Aurora Centre, also featuring performances from Roseanna Gamlen-Greene, and The Harbour Union including The Eastern, Lindon Puffin, Delaney Davidson and The Unfaithful Ways. It was her only New Zealand show for the year.[206]

On 4 June 2017, Heap performed at One Love Manchester, a benefit concert organised by Ariana Grande in response to the bombing after her concert at Manchester Arena two weeks earlier. She performed "Hide and Seek".[207][208] Other celebrity participants included Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Niall Horan, Coldplay, Miley Cyrus and Pharrell Williams.

In February 2025, Heap participated in an album titled Is This What We Want, a silent album in response to the U.K. government's proposed changes to copyright laws.

Live 4 X

In 2010, Imogen Heap partnered with Thomas Ermacora of Bubbletank[209] to organise a series of online charitable events called Live 4 X.

The initial event was inspired by the 2010 Pakistan floods. Triggered by monsoon rains, the floods left approximately one-fifth of the country of Pakistan under water, affecting over 14 million people and damaging or destroying over 900,000 homes. Teaming up with Richard Branson's Virgin Unite and Vokle.com, Heap and Ermacora created a webcast/online fundraiser to raise awareness and money for those affected by the floods. Hosted by comedian, creative and Internet personality Ze Frank, the webcast included a series of conversations with Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity, Gary Slutkin and Anders Wilhelmson (and later Richard Branson and Mary Robinson), with live performances by musicians Ben Folds, Amanda Palmer, Kate Havnevik, KT Tunstall, Josh Groban, Kaki King, Zoe Keating and Mark Isham.

The premise of Live 4 X thus established, Heap has since continued to refine the model, organize, host and perform a number of charitable, live-streaming concert events. By integrating live entertainment with educated discussion and technology, Live 4 X became an effective charitable outreach tool.

Following the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011, Heap told Washington Times Communities journalist and recording artist Jennifer Grassman that she intended to continue organising Live 4 X events to benefit various charitable causes.[210]

Live 4 X events

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Personal life

Heap began dating film director Michael Lebor in 2012.[17] In June 2014, Heap announced in her video blog that she was pregnant with her first child with Lebor. She gave birth to their daughter later that year.[214][better source needed]

Heap's sister, Juliet, died while abroad in November 2019.[107][140]

Heap was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) during the COVID-19 pandemic.[215]

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Discography

Main article: Imogen Heap discography
See also: Frou Frou (band) § Discography

Studio albums

Tours

  • Ellipse Tour (2009–2010)
  • Mycelia Tour (2019–2020)

Awards and nominations

More information Organization, Year ...

References

External links

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