cre8d design

“Speak for yourself” by Imogen Heap is quite easily the best album that I’ve heard in years. It’s unlike anything else, it’s original, beautiful, creative, full of thoughtful lyrics and it just puts you in a great mood as soon as you start listening. Each track deserves to be a single. I haven’t fallen in love with an album like this since… I can’t remember when. Classed as electro-pop, if you like pop music but you’re tired of the same-old-same-old music that’s on the radio, Imogen’s album is a breath of fresh air. She writes, records and produces her own music on her own label.

Most people haven’t heard of Imogen - I imported the CD from Amazon (it was released not long before Christmas in the US and earlier in the UK). I first discovered her through the Garden State Soundtrack (which is a lovely album) in the track “Let Go” (as half of the Frou Frou). She’s had songs on other soundtracks such as The OC, Narnia and Just Like Heaven.

I was curious to find out a little more about her, since I was so blown away by her music.. and this is where it gets more interesting.

Imogen has a blog and uses it not just as a diary and a way to connect with fans: she used it to get feedback on tracks, sounds and lyrics as she worked on the album:

…ever since I started writing the blog as well, I’ve really seen a big reaction – people just interested in the process, and what it’s really like to do it from the beginning; making a record and being involved in that.

Imogen organised everything for her album - including the cover artwork, thanks to Flickr:

There’s a website called Flickr, a photo hosting site, which has some really amazing photographers, and other people like me… who just use it for pictures on my mobile phone. And I was thinking about the artwork for the album and just thought I’d really love to get a shot of me on my bike, because a lot of the great ideas for this album came from me cycling to and from the studio. So I looked up ‘London’ on Flickr and thousands of photographs came up from the last few days, and I found about ten shots that I just kept thinking I really liked. And there was this guy called Kevin Meredith… his tag is Lomokev cos he takes shots on a Lomo camera. And I emailed him straight away and said would you be up for doing these shots of me in London, so the next day we took the shots. I sent him an email saying this is my website, this is what I do. And he wants to do it professionally, and I’m sure he’ll make it because he does amazing stuff.

When Imogen got writer’s block putting lyrics to music she’d recorded, she turned to her blog’s readers, who she see as her “A&R” team:

I wrote a blog [post] and said, look guys I’m really having trouble with this, so I gave them my three favourite ideas and out of the three they chose the subject matter for the final one. they’ve kind of become my A&R men.

Her website too, is a very personal insight into her world:

Everything that’s actually on my website is taken from my flat. The carpet is the shagpile carpet in my living room, that blue thing that comes up - like an urchin - is actually my lampshade, the EMX – the box, that’s my favourite box. The suitcase; that IS my suitcase, and the fairy lights surround my kick drum that lights up.

She gets what fans want: she ran a competition on her site to win a dinner with her where people forwarded a flash-based email:

My first idea for the competition was to do something that was so good that even somebody who didn’t really care for my music would want to send off the email. That was the idea, that everyone sends off as many emails as possible so that everyone hears about me. So, I spent quite a lot of money on the actual email.

Read the full interview »
Read her blog »
Visit her site »
See her moblog »