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The Future Is Now Stomp and Stammer - Feature/Interview At this point, you can't help but be impressed by Imogen Heap. But honestly, she's not someone I'd given more than a nanosecond of thought toward prior to last year. Arriving with an annoyance of industry hype, her first album, 1998's I Megaphone, struck me as melodramatic, coldly produced teen-Tori. Her US label, Almo Sounds, went paws up soon after, and I swiftly dismissed her to the littered scrap-basket of forgotten '90s year-of-the-woman non-sensations. Yeah, I'm a pig. I was similarly not all that blown away in 2004 by the cutesy indie-youth flick Garden State but one thing it did right was make poignant use of pop music a la Wes Anderson or Cameron Crowe, and as the film fades and Garden State's credits begin to roll, one of the most effective songs on the soundtrack is playing. It is called "Let Go," by a duo called Frou Frou. Turns out it had been released on an album two years prior by the group, which consisted of Heap and electronica producer Guy Sigsworth. Curious... The first song I heard from Speak For Yourself, Heap's second solo album, was "Hide and Seek." Now this is pretty weird, I thought. It's only her voice, nothing more, except for various electronic manipulations and multiplications. With evocative words that seem to paint the aftermath of mass devastation or perhaps just the collapse of one single relationship, the song surrounds you with haunting sublimity. Parallel to how "Let Go" bypassed boring corporate radio to reach eager ears, "Hide and Seek" debuted last spring during a scene on the FOX teen soap The OC, which I've never watched, but the ensuing iTunes buzz about the track goes to show, again, just how much impact astute song-placement is having these days. Stuck amongst syncopated, bleeping pop songs on Speak For Yourself, "Hide and Seek" certainly stands out. Aside from it and the closing piano balled "The Moment I Said It," which leaves you shivering by the lengthy fade-out, most of Heap's new album consists of bouncy, flirtatiously danceable electro-pop, humming and thumping in patterns that coalesce into pleasing if rather light combinations. It's chick-pop of varying degrees of effectiveness, but it is quite crafty, especially when you consider that Heap wrote, produced and - aside from a handful of brief guests, including Jeff Beck on the ecstatically giddy "Goodbye and Go" - performed it all herself. It's a testament to the modern possibilities of musical technology. Of course, it wouldn't matter a whit if Heap weren't such a prodigiously talented woman. Raised in Essex and classically trained on piano and other instruments as a child, she began writing songs as a pre-teen and immersed herself in computerized compositional and editing technology later while attending boarding school. By age 17 she was already signed and made her live debut - in a coup arranged by her management team at the time - sandwiched between Eric Clapton and The Who at the 1996 Prince's Trust Concert in London's Hyde Park. Quite a heap to live up to, and if it's taken her a while to come into her own with Speak For Yourself (released last July in the UK, and in November in the States), well for cryin' out loud, she's still only 27! Aside from her determination in taking complete control of the creative process for the album, she and manager Mark Wood established an independent label, Megaphonic Records, to release it (they've since licensed it to RCA in the States and another Sony division in England). Asked by Stomp and Stammer if she considers herself a control freak, the whip-smart and completely charming Heap laughs that "I think I'm just very protective over the things I love. And I really, really love this album, and I wasn't prepared to let anything bad happen to it. In the past I have kind of blamed lots of people for things not happening, and partly it's been their fault, and partly it's been my fault. But I didn't want to go through another few years of being bitter about something not happening because somebody didn't do the right job." Stomp and Stammer: When you started Megaphonic, did you also set up all the deals for pressing and distribution and promotion? "I did quite a bit of it on my own. We were both learning. Neither of us had set up a record company before. I had to read so many pieces of paper, it was boring as hell. But it was important for me to get it up and running as quickly as possible. And I thought it would be quicker. I mean, I always used to complain to record companies, like, 'Why is it taking so long? Why is it taking three months to put this out?' And you realize why. There are so many things in the way that you have to get [through] to get to that state. It's quite a lot to get your head around." Music fans always complain about the pedestrian restrictiveness of commercial radio, but you've proven that you can be successful using other alternatives. You've had several songs included in some key TV programs and movies. Is that an outlet you actively pursue? "Well, I don't want to bypass radio. Ultimately, I'd love everyone to play my record. But, I do have this great company I use in the States to basically do the job of a publishing company. They work on a commission basis, and they're all the time kind of pitching off stuff to anyone who wants it, anyone who needs something in particular, for a particular spot. And, so, yeah, when I was making the record, I was very aware of what was happening with 'Let Go' and Garden State, and it was very obvious to me that that was a route to go down. And to embrace the evidence that you can get away with more with visuals. You can get away with being quite creative, if you know that things are gonna be ending up in films." Also it seems clear that the people currently involved in making films or TV shows or commercials are significantly more adventurous, musically, than those programming radio stations. "Yeah. I mean, I don't know what it's like in the States, but in the UK, there's so many adverts with great music. Like in the last five years, maybe less than that, instead of a car advert being with some cheap music, every single car advert, every single chocolate advert, everything has got some interesting and newsworthy piece of music behind it. It's really cool kind of stuff, like the WARP label gets a lot of adverts, because it's kind of dark, moody, and exciting sonically. I got a skater advert in Italy. And the record's not even released there, and it's been in the top ten of iTunes in Italy for about four months." It's all about getting your music exposed. "In as many different ways as possible. And then the trick is to kind of make sure that once it's out there, people know it's out there. And either touring with different people or doing collaborations, or doing remixes, or whatever avenue it is to get to the people that wouldn't ordinarily hear you. And also being free with music on the Internet. You know, everybody says people transferring songs to each other is ruining the record industry, but I don't kind of agree with that. I do definitely see the merit in it, because at the end of the day, I really believe that if people love your record, they will eventually buy it. And you know, there aren't that many records that I buy in a year. People will make me CDs, and I'll kind of get off on something, and if I really like it I'll go out and find more about that person. And I'll always go see them live. When I was doing the last two tours with this album, the turnout was amazing. And everybody was kind of shocked that all the gigs sold out. Because sometimes sales figures, even though they've done very well, people just can't gauge anymore how well something's doing. Like Frou Frou went to Italy five years ago, and every single kid - I'm not joking - every single kid knew who I was! I couldn't walk down the street without some kid going 'Frou Frou!' But even still, we only sold like 10,000 records in Italy. So there's definitely something going on there. And I think...if they're not making the money off the records, then they've got to put the money into touring, and merchandise and other things. You know, the world is changing, the music world is changing. And if people can't afford to buy it, then they won't." You seem to be a very visual person too. Is the visual presentation of yourself and your finished music as important to you as the composing of the music itself? "It is important. Obviously at the end of the day, the music is the most important thing. But it's still important for me to go onstage and feel like I'm at home and I'm not giving a false impression of myself. So even though when I tour I have all this geeky gear, I think it's important to decorate that geeky gear with nice girlishness, and fake birds and fake flowers, just to bring a bit of color to the stage. 'Cause I do like to live in color, I have lots of colorful clothing, and I think the music's very colorful, and I don't feel right just kind of turning up with bits of gear that can look like anybody's gear. It's important for me to personalize things, in the same way that I like to personalize myself when I wake up in the morning and put some clothes on." The quality available for home recording and small studio recording has gotten so much better over the last several years. Do you think knowing how to use all that stuff is becoming an integral part of being an independent musician? "I think it's just bound to happen, in the same way that people aren't working in offices anymore - so many more people can now work at home. It's the 'computer generation' (laughs), it's bringing everything to be much more convenient. And the more the demand is for it, the more people have a go at it, and the cheaper the gear gets. It's amazing what you can do now, as a result of all of these advances in technology, which you couldn't have done ten years ago. When I did my first record, I was still using a mixing board. And I know how to use a mixing board, I did lots of courses in it, and I did my first record on that, but it's so different! Everybody had to stretch across the mixing board like...there had to be like five people trying to do this together like some kind of dance on the mixing board. Even though it's fun and it's great to have all those people, it's so much easier now to make something really exactly the way you want it. You can draw lines, you can draw waveforms, you can get so down to detail. I think these kinds of records couldn't have existed ten years ago. And I think it's very exciting! But it is, I guess, quite sad in some ways. The studio atmosphere, and having a great studio, and the history they bring with them, is something nice to go to." Is it hard to keep up with all the changing technology? "I don't use anything, presently, that's very weird or amazing. I just use ProTools, but it's just because I know it so well. It doesn't feel like it stops me in any kind of creative moment. It's like an extension of my hand or something. Like, if you're writing an essay on the computer, you're using the letters to churn out what's in your head, and there's no kind of time issue. And it's the same with recording audio. It's just molding sound. It's very instant. Because the computers are so fast that you don't have to wait for them anymore to kind of drum their fingers on the screen. So I don't really actively keep up to date with plug-ins and all of that, because there's just so, so much going on, like just reading one issue of Sound On Sound and your head is hurting a little. I do it project by project. For the next thing that I do, I'll have another look at my studio and see how better I can get it more ease-of-use so that everything's nicely working together, and get the fastest computer, and then work from there." You learned how to manipulate sounds on a computer so young that it became a large part of the way you compose. "Yeah, I did. I went to a boarding school, and I didn't get along famously with everyone at the boarding school, so I did spend a lot of my time alone in the music school, and yeah, there was a room there with an Atari and some software, and once I figured out what it did - which I didn't really fully figure it out! - it really, really excited me, that you could have so much freedom to spend time and make melodies, and create a piano part that you could never play because you haven't got ten hands. I mean, it's very basic [compared] to what you can do now, but it was still extremely exciting. I was really lucky that I had that at my disposal when I was much younger. I guess I'm a little bit ahead of the game, as a result of that, but I think in like five years, there's gonna be tons of girls and guys...I mean, already, there's a lot of guys doing it for themselves, like Squarepusher and Cursor Minor and Milosh and things like that, but I can't think of many girls doing it. But I think that's just because it was more difficult for girls to get into the studio to really get to know anything. It was very male dominated. But now you don't have to do that, you can just get free software off the internet, or get GarageBand when you get your Mac, and that's the basics, and then kids can learn to do that from age five! It's just going to be amazing what people are gonna be able to do, as one person, in times to come." |