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Imogen Heap

Imogen Heap

Imogen Heap (born December 9, 1977) is a Grammy-nominated English singer-songwriter from Essex, most famous for her work as part of Frou Frou and for her 2005 solo record Speak for Yourself.

Imogen Heap played music from an early age, and is classically
trained in many instruments, including the piano (her first
instrument), as well as the cello, clarinet, guitar, drums, and the Array Mbira.
She had begun to write songs by the time of her eleventh birthday. Her
mother, an art therapist, and her father, a rocks construction
retailer, separated when Heap was twelve. The boarding school
she was sent to lacked students wishing to pursue music and Heap
clashed with the music teacher. His idea of punishment was to leave
Heap alone to learn for herself, as a result; she principally taught
herself sequencing, music engineering, sampling and production on Atari computers. Following this, Heap went on to study at the BRIT School Of Performing Arts & Technology in Croydon, Surrey, (later attended by artists such as Katie Melua). She signed her first record contract at the age of 17 to independent record label Almo Sounds, having enjoyed a prestigious live debut, performing four songs, backed by friends Acacia, between sets by The Who and Eric Clapton at the 1996 Prince’s Trust Concert in Hyde Park, London.

Heap’s debut album, i Megaphone (an anagram of “Imogen Heap”) was released in 1998 internationally via Almo Sounds, and garnered critical acclaim, comparing the angst-filled tracks to work by artists such as PJ Harvey, Kate Bush and Annie Lennox.
The album was a mixture of self-penned, self-produced tracks, alongside
tracks co-written with, and produced by established producers such as David Kahne, Dave Stewart and Guy Sigsworth.
Promotion for the record included a tour of America, where the album
was becoming popular through word-of-mouth, and performances all around
Europe. Three singles were commercially released in limited quantities
in the UK; “Getting Scared” “Shine” and “Come Here Boy.” “Oh Me, Oh My”
was also sent to US radio stations in place of “Shine.” Almo Sounds cut
funding for the UK promotional, and gave Heap a deadline to deliver
songs for her second album; she was told that they lacked “hit
potential” and left her in limbo for over a year, worsened when it was
announced that the record label had been sold to Universal
and would be shut down and disbanded, with its repertoire of artists
moving or leaving the label. Heap was one of the artists who was
dropped from the label, leaving her without a record contract. After
receiving more commercial success with her work with Guy Sigsworth as
the duo Frou Frou and her second solo album, Speak for Yourself,
Heap was able to secure the re-release of “i Megaphone.” It was
re-released on November 14, 2006 to coincide with her Fall 2006 North
American tour.

i Megaphone Japanese Re-Release - Aozora Records, 2002

In her time in “limbo” with Almo Sounds, Heap appeared on two
further UK singles; “Meantime”, a track written by Guy Sigsworth and
Alexander Nilere for the soundtrack to the independent British movie, G:MT - Greenwich Mean Time
and “Blanket,” a collaboration with Urban Species, which was
commercially released on 2 CDs, as well as being available on the Urban
Species album of the same name. At the same time, i Megaphone was licensed from Almo Sounds to Aozora Records in Japan, who re-released and re-promoted the album in January 2002, featuring “Blanket,” and a Frou Frou
remix of one of her B-sides, “Aeroplane,” for which a video was
released exclusively to Japanese media. The album featured new
packaging, all-new artwork, and a previously unavailable hidden track,
entitled “Kidding,” recorded live during her 1999 tour. Following the
selling and disbanding of Almo Sounds, all versions of i Megaphone apart from the Japanese
re-release are scarce in circulation, having not been re-printed since
1999. A Brazilian label, Trama Records, claim to hold the license to
the record and have started re-printing copies of the album in limited
quantities. The album was also released onto the USA iTunes Music Store
in early 2006, and will be available via Heap’s own digital download
store later on in the year. In the gap between the end of promotion for
i Megaphone internationally, and the re-promotion, Heap had also
begun to think about her second solo album, and had started writing
songs, both solo, as well as working with Guy Sigsworth; however, as
she was left without a record deal, the songs were shelved.

Imogen Heap kept in contact with Guy Sigsworth, who had co-written and produced “Getting Scared” from i Megaphone.
The initial idea was that Sigsworth would put together an album,
featuring tracks written and produced by him alongside a singer,
songwriter, poet or rapper, to be released under the name Frou Frou. Sigsworth himself was also having record label issues, as his band, Acacia
were being ignored. Heap explains that Sigsworth invited her over to
his studio, to write lyrics to a four-bar motif he had, with one
condition - that she include the word “love” somewhere. The first line
she came up with was “lung of love, leaves me breathless,” and the Details
album track, “Flicks” was born. A week later, Sigsworth phoned her up
again, and together they wrote and recorded “Breathe In” and it
happened again and again, until nearly half the album was completed. In
December 2001, they made the conscious decision to form a duo together.
Their first official release as Frou Frou was a remix of “Airplane”
(renamed “Aeroplane”) - a track they had written together at the time
of “Getting Scared,” which was used as a B-side on the “Shine” single
and on the Japanese re-release of i Megaphone.

In August 2002, they released the Details album and singles
“Breathe In,” “It’s Good To Be In Love,” and “Must Be Dreaming” (the
latter two were not commercially available). The album - a full
collaboration between the duo, with Heap giving vocals to tracks they
had written and produced together - was critically acclaimed, but did
not enjoy the commercial success that had been hoping for, and in late
2003, after an extensive promotional tour of the UK, Europe and the
USA, the duo were told that their record label, Island Records
would not be picking up the option for a second album. They were,
however, open to signing Heap as a solo artist; she declined, unwilling
to entrust them with her career after their mistreatment of Details.
She says, “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’? You wouldn’t. So I didn’t take the deal.” Heap and
Sigsworth remain firm friends, and have worked together since the
project, including their temporary re-formation in late 2003, when they
covered the Bonnie Tyler classic, “Holding Out For A Hero,” which was featured during the credits of the movie Shrek 2
after Jennifer Saunders’ version in the film. Frou Frou saw a
resurgence in popularity in 2004, when their album track “Let Go” was
featured in the independent movie Garden State. “Let Go” appeared again as a song in the winter holidays blockbuster The Holiday that appeared in the cinemas in 2006.

In August 2006, Heap performed a set at the V Festival,
and it was announced that “Headlock” would be the third single to be
lifted from the album, to be released on 16 October 2006 in the UK, on
CD (in a special digipak
with partially frosted plastic outer sleeve, which renders the single
chart ineligible) and special limited edition 7″ vinyl, once again
remixed for radio as ‘Immi’s Radio Mix’ and accompanied by a new
all-vocal B-side, entitled “Mic Check.” The “Headlock” video premiered
on Manchester-centric
TV station, Channel M, in early September, before being sent to other
music television channels for rotation, and promo CDs of the single
were sent out featuring a drum and bass
remix of the track by High Contrast. In late September and early
October, Heap embarked on a tour of the UK, holding a competition on MySpace
for different support acts for each venue, before touring throughout
Canada and the USA in November & December. She will also be scoring
the soundtrack to a movie documentary about flamingos in late 2006 and
early 2007, having visited Kenya in July 2006 for inspiration and to
begin recording sounds. In December 2006, Heap was featured on the
front page of The Green Room magazine.

On December 7, 2006, Imogen received two Grammy nominations for the
49th Annual Grammy Awards, one for Best New Artist and the other for
Best Song Written For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media
for “Can’t Take It In”. In early 2007, a Verizon
commercial featured the instrumental of her song “Headlock”. Heap
recently confirmed that she will not be making appearances for most of
2007 in order to complete the scoring for the Disney documentary and to
work on her forthcoming third solo album that is due out sometime in
late 2007 or early 2008.

“Hide & Seek” is the most commonly used Imogen Heap song in TV shows and other media, and is featured in the Zach Braff movie, The Last Kiss, was used in an episode from season three of the Showtime TV show, “The L Word“, and featured in an episode of US reality show, So You Think You Can Dance. The CBS show Smith used “Hide & Seek” as the ending song for the show’s debut, as did the same network’s CSI: Miami for Episode 4 in Season 5. The O.C. closed with “Hide & Seek” in the final episode of its second season. The song was also used in early previews for the NBC drama Heroes, and UK previews for the Season 3 finale of Lost.

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ZZ and the Police

So what rock concerts are a must this summer? What about The Police, what an amazing comeback.. and what do The Police have to say about it?

“In my humble opinion, ‘Every Breath You Take’ is Sting’s best song with the worst arrangement. I think Sting could have had any other group do this song and it would have been better than our version - except for Andy’s brilliant guitar part. Basically, there’s an utter lack of groove. It’s a totally wasted opportunity for our band. Even though we made gazillions off of it, and it’s the biggest hit we ever had, when I listen to this recording, I think ‘God, what a bunch of assholes we were!’ - Stewart

man…

And then there’s ZZ Top, one of the best boogie bands of all time…
check the concert listings for more info..

Did you know that Paula Abdul worked with ZZ Top on their ‘dance’ moves? Seems very strange, but apparently they needed work on their stage presence, and Paula is by trade a choreographer. The vague inuendo about her following the Milli Vanilli scandal would not seem to make her the optimum candidate for working with a traditional band like ZZ, but who knows. Seeing Eric Burdon perform makes one really wonder how old is too old to really rock, but then he was probably too old when he was with the Animals when you get right down to it. And then theres John Kay, who performs the old Steppenwolf songs better than they were done originally (ok thats not saying all that much).

The Police

ZZ Top

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