It’s a bit too easy to write off Britain’s Imogen Heap. Catch her latest single, “First Train Home,” on the radio, and you might assume she’s just another in a long line of wispy, throaty singers with a secret yearning for some far-off place, dulcet words echoing over top-of-the-line electronic production provided by somebody else entirely. Not so. As fans know, Heap has been doing her thing for more than a decade, and it truly is her thing. The classically trained pianist counts among her influences Annie Lennox, Kate Bush and Björk, and a little bit of each — well, a lot of Lennox — appears on her latest album, Ellipse. What’s more, witness Heap live and you’ll see the skill and originality she brings to her medium. With a Monome (the open-source beat machine pioneered by Daedelus) in her lap, she loops keys, voice and digitalia into glitchy soundscapes on par with Dntel’s poppier output.
This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2010.