Vivid LIVE at Sydney Opera House is a 10-day celebration of ambitious popular music within the city’s annual Vivid Sydney festival of light, music and ideas.
It was the only way I could fit in the whole story of what’s been going on these past 2 1/2 years. There will only 2,500 ever made. — Imogen Heap
Sparks, aka HeapSongs, is the latest album from Imogen Heap, two years or more in the making, due for early release next year.
Because so much has gone into making Sparks, that cannot be conveyed in a conventional album, even with a 24-page glossy booklet, Immi has decided to release as a limited edition box set with a very special price.
Sparks deluxe box set contents
Within the box …
Each track, will have its own DVD data disc. On this disc, studio quality audio, plus music video, plus mini documentary of the making of, plus 16-page booklet.
A conventional audio CD.
A double vinyl LP.
A DVD of the making of the album.
A 100 plus page hardback book documenting the making of the album.
Got enough objects, tickets, photos + scribbles for 1000 pages never mind 120! So much has happened in 2.5yrs. Some making me feel quite sad
The first one hundred deluxe box sets sold, invite to party at her house. Where you can pick up your own personal deluxe box set in advance of official release. These have already been sold.
For many people this is going to be way out of their price range, and yet they may like the idea of having studio quality sound, which is not available on a CD.
I therefore have the following ideas …
Follow the example of Steve Lawson. He decided to release all the music from a recent US tour. He did not like a Best of Album, as he thought all the material was worth releasing, on the other hand, to release a dozen albums was not practicable. He decided to release on a memory stick, in a presentation box, together with liner notes.
A live broadcast by Imogen Heap of the latest Heapsong You Know Where to Find Me on Google+ using Google Hangout, which was also broadcast live on youtube on her youtube channel.
There was a delay of about 15 minutes before the broadcast started.
A long preamble by Imogen Heap on how You Know Where to Find Me came to be written.
It was about the River Thames, its different moods, how people viewed and interacted with The Thames.
There was an attempt to compose in a boat overlooking The Thames.
For the last few months she has been trying to put it all together.
She played You Know Where to Find Me, but warned it would not be very good as she had not played it live before and advised to watch her video for a more polished version.
Not satisfied, she stopped, apologised, then started again from the third verse. An amazing difference.
Surprisingly the sound quality was quite good (though sound levels very low), the video ok, especially for a live streaming event.
I wondered why there was a secondary video at the bottom of the screen. This was for video conferencing, and became apparent when Imogen brought other people in for a jam session. Around half a dozen people joined in.
The jam session did not work too well. People were too loud, sound very distorted and video quality very poor.
I have not had time to listen to Imogen Heap since she was in the boat during the summer. I had forgotten how talented she is.
For someone who knows how to use social media, interacts with those who enjoy her music, I am amazed Imogen Heap does not release on bandcamp as better for her and better for those who love her music.
Heapsongs will be released as an album May 2013, with 12 maybe 13 songs. Following release, Imogen Heap will tour.
She then went up to Edinburgh, where as well as attending TedGlobal to demonstrate the gloves, she filmed You Know Where To Find Me in different houses, playing the piano and wearing the clothes of the person whose house she was in.
Last week via the listening chair, Imogen Heap was collecting thoughts on The Thames, crowd sourcing for her new song You know where to find me, a perspective from The Thames.
Various themes came through which will be incorporated into the song:
Driftwood
Walking the Thames, Imogen has cycled the length
Quite strong, strong tide, but in slack does not move
Can we have a conversation with a river?
A him, Father Thames
Piano melody came in the early hours of the morning.
Storm hit during the night. The boat was rocking. Would it be blown off into The Thames?
Beautiful haunting piano melody.
Forgot the song, so new.
People stand around, just looking, can do this by a river.
Vishal Dadlani and Imogen Heap recording Minds Without Fear
Imogen Heap on the streets of Samode
Have pity on those afraid to take risks, because they will perhaps never experience disappointment or delusion or suffer as those do with a dream to follow. — Paulo Coelho
When you dream, you can enjoy the luxury of being yourself. Make it a reality. — Paulo Coelho
Minds Without Fear, heapsong4, the fourth track on the album Heapsongs by Imogen Heap.
The tracks of Heapsongs are crowd sourced, each is a community, collaborative venture. Each track has its own micro-site on the net.
Like Santiago in The Alchemist who took risks, followed his dreams, The Dewarists decided to follow their dreams, take risks, breakout of the mainstream, inspiring musicians collaborating to create original music while travelling to locations across India.
We all have to learn to be like Santiago, read the signs, listen to our heart, take risks, follow our dreams.
Imogen Heap collaborated with the duo Vishal-Shekhar to create Minds Without Fear, drawing her inspiration from the Tagore poem, ‘Where The Mind Is Without Fear‘. Filming took place at the 475-year-old Samode Palace on the outskirts of Jaipur in Rajasthan.
Minds Without Fear was available for free download. The bad news is that this was via a facebook app, not good news if you have no wish for a facebook app to have access to all your personal information.
Imogen Heap has a reserved space on bandcamp, but currently nothing there. Let us hope Heapsongs is uploaded when complete. In the meantime, please record the improvisation for Earth Hour 2012 and upload to bandcamp.
Were Heapsongs on bandcamp, the tracks could be added one by one. It would be possible to enable Minds Without Fear to be available for free download for a limited period, thus no excuse for forcing people to use a facebook app with its gross violation of personal privacy.
Imogen Heap headed The Dewarists Stage at the Bacardi NH7 Weekender in Pune, 18-20 November 2011.
The Dewarists is an exploration between the different musical genres in India, crossover of boundaries, collaboration between. The music can be downloaded for free via their facebook page.
Note: I mistakenly assumed from the link, download through a facebook app, if so, this would have been bad, but I am pleased to be able to report not so. You go through to a facebook web page, click like, provide an e-mail address and you will receive a link to download an mp3 file. It would though have been easier to have the track on bandacmp, click to download, provide e-mail, and receive a link.
Beautiful spoken word set within a background of music.
Neglected Space (Heapsong3), the third track on the album Heapsongs by Imogen Heap.
The tracks of Heapsongs are crowd sourced, each is a community, collaborative venture. Each track has its own micro-site on the net. Each track has a story to tell.
England used to be a country of walled gardens.
A vegetable plot, a herb garden, an orchard, a greenhouse. All traditional, heritage varieties.
Not far from the Roundhouse, a Georgian garden, sadly neglected.
Imogen used this local garden for inspiration, raised awareness, funding.
2 minutes walk from my house there is a Georgian walled garden in need of a lot of help. In it’s heyday it was a kitchen garden at the peak of gardening technology. The size of a football pitch, with walls 4 metres high, inside growing amongst other things were pineapples in greenhouses. It’s had quite a history but sadly over the last 30 years it’s fallen into disrepair and mostly been neglected.
With the help of Clear Village and our ‘Garden Angels’ (volunteers) we plan to help to bring the garden back to life with the local community, putting spade to soil, as I wander about the garden putting pen to paper.
The piece I want to write is from the voice of the Walled Garden itself. A spoken word piece or perhaps a kind of collective voice for neglected spaces and abandoned man made structures. Being in the garden, I hear it almost sigh in relief with the news of this fresh enthusiasm. As if it’s been calling out to anyone who might catch it from dust, to fall in love with it again. As those of you involved breathe a new life into the garden, community and beyond, it becomes clearer to me what it’s been missing all these years and between spurts of getting my hands dirty, I’ll be penning these thoughts.
There’ll be the odd camera about, filming the making of Heapsong3 and the garden’s progress. I may occasionally bring in an instrument into the garden and see who steps up to the challenge of making a noise, or perhaps come up and record the sound of whatever it is you’re working on.
The volunteers working in the garden and Imogen wrote blogs as the work progressed.
Writers write to be read, musicians play to be heard, and hope to make sufficient money not to be starving in a garret, but I do wonder with some musicians, some writers too.
To find Vitamin String Quartet Performs Imogen Heap on the Vitamin String Quartet website I had to trawl through pages and pages of albums. I think I was on my eighth or ninth page. Then when you get there, all you find is a few seconds lofi sample.
To hear their excellent improvisation of Lifeline, you have to rely on some kind soul doing their work for them and uploading to youtube.
On spotify they get doubly ripped off. It is the facebook model, used to collect personal data, a cut goes to the major record labels. iTtunes rips off too.
I am somewhat baffled and rather concerned that a comment made on a web page on the site of Imogen Heap appears not on that page as one would expect but on facebook! Does this imply that accessing a facebook app, but not accepting, steals personal data as though one has been foolish enough to accept?
Until that weekend, I had not heard of Imogen Heap. I was watching a talk by solo bass player Steve Lawson and he mentioned Imogen Heap as a good example of the use of social networking.
I checked her out, and as a result, stumbled upon the live streaming event from the back garden of the Round House.
I sadly only caught the tail end. I caught part of Love the Earth, followed by the premier of Heapsong6, now entitled Me, The Machine, in which Imogen Heap uses gloves with built in sensors to control the sound. The entire event was powered by pedal power.
Imogen said the streamed event would be made available, but currently only through a facebook app, which is not good news if you value your personally privacy.
I found her to be a very talented musician.
The beginning of Love the Earth is very reminiscent of Vangelis.
Although the premier of the film, this was not the premier of film and music. The premier of the music was at the Royal Albert Hall a year or so ago, with Imogen Heap conducting and the film showing in the background.
And yes, I agree with Steve Lawson, Imogen Heap makes very effective use of social networks.
She is using crowd sourcing and community support, but in a very novel way.
The film clips for Love the Earth were crowd sourced. Her album Heapsongs, of which we heard the premier of the sixth track last weekend is crowd sourced, she invited people to send her sound samples, which she may or may not use.
Those who have provided the film clips, the sound sources, will be paid if used.
The movements in Love the Earth follow a Fibonacci series: 1 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 5 …
The Fibonacci series is an important series in nature. It describes the spiral in a flower, the spiral in a seashell.
Love the Earth shows the wonder and beauty of planet earth. A wonder and beauty humankind like a cancerous growth is hell bent on destroying.
Love the Earth is available to watch on-line on vimeo. The sound track, will be, or is, available to download and buy (let us hope she puts it on bandcamp). The money raised, will then be ploughed back to produce a DVD.
Heapsong6 is about to be recorded as the sixth track of Heapsongs. Each time it is performed it will be different as it is an improvisation.
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