Imogen Heap

English singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Imogen Heap specialized in bridging opposites: ancient folk music and avantgarde minimalist techniques, lo-fi home-made instruments and digital arrangements, vulnerable elegies and angry rants. I Megaphone (1998) introduced a creative singer and arranger in the tradition of Kate Bush, Bjork and Sinead O'Connor (Getting Scared, Angry Angel).

She started Frou Frou with producer Guy Sigsworth, a project that debuted with the mediocre Details (2002) but then became famous for Let Go (2004).

Heap produced, wrote, sang on and played on her second solo, Speak for Yourself (Megaphonic, 2005). She was now free to coin a more personal form of laptop-pop through intricate and unstable electronic arrangements that contrast with simple and even childish melodies and agile beats. Past the trivial and bombastic dance-pop of Headlock, the syncopated and funky Goodnight and Go is wrapped around a hypnotic guitar loop (courtesy of Jeff Beck). The vocals of Have You Got It in You? seem to probe psychological depths in a gothic Bjork-esque atmosphere before soaring over tribal beats. Hide and Seek is a vocoder-filtered a-cappella dirge that translates Laurie Anderson's Oh Superman to a fragile introverted mental landscape. Daylight Robbery shoots electronic shards like guitar distortion, hinting at heavy metal while flirting with synth-pop. The Moment I Said It is a psychodrama with peaks of pathos that border on operatic aria. Unfortunately, the second half of the album is largely filler. Heap tinkers with ambient music, pop ballad, synth-pop, hip-hop, folk-rock, chamber pop, to create a multifaceted sonic experience.

The disappointing Ellipse (2009) contains the instrumental The Fire and First Train Home.

The trance-y Neglected Space is the highlight of Sparks (2014), followed by the hallucinated Propeller Seeds and the charming Lifeline. The album, crafted by genre bending with production techniques, contains songs that originated from international collaborations and international travel. Other songs feel like Fluxus conceptual art, like You Know Where to Find Me which includes notes played on 13 pianos owned by fans of hers and Me the Machine which was co-composed with a machine.