Imogen Heap - Hide And Seek

[DonPedro]

Hide and seek is addictive in a love/hate way. Shows you that Autotune can be used for more than fixing bad vocals...

[Mr Edit]

Its a good album with some interesting production, though I've not felt the need to listen to it for a while. Its almost like a low budget Bjork but a lot safer. Good all the same.

[musicjon]

I actually really enjoyed that album. Track two has some cool "digital" sounding guitars on it.

[MJGreene Audio]

I agree. I love it and after it was suggested to me and I listened to a couple of tracks I bought it right away.

Great voice and great album.

Michael Greene

[discolightning]

It's called a vocoder. It makes her voice a filter to the synth...kinda.

The album is great. It's very very girly at times, but the songs are obviously connecting with a lot of people. The cool thing is that you can't be ashamed of listening to it because the quality of the music is far beyond most of what we're hearing these days.

Hide & Seek did the same thing to me, too.

owen

[Schmeckitup]

I'm a little obsessed with this song. The rest of the album is pretty good, but Hide and Seek is one of the most original and moving tracks I've heard in a long time. I love that something so technological in nature can feel so real.
-g

[DonPedro]

Yep. Notice how you can listen to it a couple of times in a row without getting tired. Great atmosphere.

[bpatural]

i was lucky enough to see her perform some songs on a piano in a small club for the wrap party of that video....i have to say she's the most amazing vocal talent i've ever seen...she took some songs which had amazing and esoteric electronic production and sang them even better on an old out of tune piano. blew me away.
-brian

[Saudade]

Yep I heard it a few weeks ago at Aurgasm. My attention was instantly captured at the 1st few seconds. It was just sublime! This is a classic example where technology didn't get in the way but instead merged perfectly with human soul. Just close your eyes and the song will take you to another warm and fuzzy place....(alien planet? )

There's an excerpt of an interview at the site where she mentioned how she did the track with a Digitech harmonizer or some hardware box. It seems the final version was pretty much the 1st take when she started fooling around with the unit (plus some overdubs). If you listen carefully there is a noise at the end of the song and it is actually a train passing by. I think she recorded the take herself at her own place or something.

There were a few other tunes from the album featured but I don't think they come anywhere near the ingenuity of Hide and Seek.

I think being able to hear parallel harmonies "live" while singing out melodic ideas really makes you think "out of the box" and respond differently, with regards to where you can place interesting twists and turns that you wouldn't have been able to "hear" if you are just accompanying yourself on an instrument with plain chords.

I have heard a live demonstration of the TC Helicon (or something) range and its really cool to have 5 layers of voices responding "live" to what you're singing into the mic. Great compositional tool if you can afford it!

[Sender]

I saw her at the Exit/In in Nashville with Butch Walker and some other friends. I thought it was really cool, but a little out-of-genre to be tour with Butch.

[cl516]

I too was freakin' blown away by this track when I first heard it.
SO refreshing compared to the textbook electronic/downtempo/IDM/blahblahblah stuff that just gets thrown out to us.

i love how it sounds like vocoder + autotune, and yet it's still incredibly emotional/moving at the climax... nice and simple, yet works so great the whole song.

i didn't like every track on the CD but i enjoyed headlock, loose ends, and hide and seek.

[title]

i also love that song. she produced her record in her personal studio.

another subject... am I the only one who thinks she sounds like Dido???

[David Lee]

Originally Posted by title

i also love that song. she produced her record in her personal studio.

another subject... am I the only one who thinks she sounds like Dido???

I asked EVERYONE, and yes, you are the only one.

just kidding

I too, find this song pretty wild. the dark reverbs with a nice predelay are pretty killer.

[excellrec]

Wow, I just heard this song for the first time about a week ago. I would suggest going to her website and checking out the video. It started me listening to the song all over again. Definetly one of the more innovative things I've heard in a good long while.

[Restless]

Imogen will appear on David Letterman Jan 10th in the US. FYI.
R

[Zoe-Ruth]

LOVE that song. she's quite a goof in person. so i tend to look at her production and experimentation with a loving eye. that song has incredible lyrics. when she says: "they were here first" i nearly feel apart.
i saw her perform at the El Rey last night and she was just awsome. so personable and genuine. she did that song with some sort of little hand held autotune device. let me tell you, you could have heard a pin drop in that room. sometimes when an artist is that committed to a song...when you feel every breath and every word...you just forget about everything else. all of your nerdy engineering mentality haults for a moment. and you, for a moment, are like everyone else. irrevocably affected.

[joeq]

saw her on Letterman the other eve. She did a one-person band kind of thing with a laptop and synths, but still very "live" and organic. Very nice.

[Jenre]

My girlfriend was obsessed with this song for about 2 or 3 weeks. Constantly on her Myspace page listening to it. For me, it got boring. Sure it was kind of interesting at first and a bit different, but it got boring kinda soon. I havent heard her album but the other tracks she had on her Myspace were totally different and I wasn't liking them at all to be honest.

[Levi]

Yeah, what's so amazing about her is that, unless I'm sorely mistaken, she programmed, engineered, produced and mixed this record (for the most part)!!! If this is true, does that mean she's the brains behind Frou Frou? (I'm a Guy Sigsworth fan, so no disrespect to him... just curious) Also, having Jeff Beck play the solo lines in the middle of "Say Goodnight and Go" is just wonderful... great tones and fit. She has about 3-4 other solo records out, but I've never heard them... wonder what they're like in comparison. To me, this is one of the freshest records to come out in a while... it's one of those that the more you listen and study, the more you gather... like a great Seal record!

[aidyhall]

'Hide And Seek' made me sit up and take notice, too! What a beautiful track.

I read an interview with her where she said it was the TC Helicon, on a vocoder setting. The vocoder would only 'allow' 4 or 5 notes through, but she was playing dense 8-10 finger chords into it, and the machine would 'pick' which notes it let through. I'm sure Brian Eno would love that concept of chance and the machine choosing your destiny, even though you are controlling the machine ...

Apparently, she booked the mastering date exactly one year ahead of the day she started the album, and she kept the date! If only some of the projects I worked on ran to that kind of schedule!

Also, she said that she remortgaged her house to buy gear and set up a studio, so she may be the ultimate 'gearslut' (not that I'm calling her a slut, you understand...)

[s00p3rm4n]

Originally Posted by Levi

like a great Seal record!

Wwwwwwwwwwwhhhhat?

[Levi]

Wwwwwwwwwwwhhhhat?

C'mon... Trevor Horn does great productions. If you take the time to listen to what he did on the 2nd and 4th Seal records, in my opinion, the ideas run deep! Fabulously cut tracks, great parts, amazing mixes... even if you're not a fan of the music, there's still the brains behind the production... his track record "speaks for itself." (no pun intended, Miss Imogen!)

[ology]

She used a Digitech VOCALIST which is a "HARMONIZER" and NOT Auto Tune NOR a Vocoder. Very different technology and much better imo.

[dhiltonlittle]

Originally Posted by Levi

Yeah, what's so amazing about her is that, unless I'm sorely mistaken, she programmed, engineered, produced and mixed this record (for the most part)!!! If this is true, does that mean she's the brains behind Frou Frou? (I'm a Guy Sigsworth fan, so no disrespect to him... just curious) Also, having Jeff Beck play the solo lines in the middle of "Say Goodnight and Go" is just wonderful... great tones and fit. She has about 3-4 other solo records out, but I've never heard them... wonder what they're like in comparison. To me, this is one of the freshest records to come out in a while... it's one of those that the more you listen and study, the more you gather... like a great Seal record!

i think she learned A LOT while looking over guy's shoulder.

[rack gear]

she's an amazing artist. hung out w/ her this entire day. she's an amazing person as well.



iTunes Store - Imogen Heap - The Last Kiss - Hide and Seek

[dan_zero]

Originally Posted by redvelvetstudios

she's an amazing artist. hung out w/ her this entire day. she's an amazing person as well.



iTunes Store - Imogen Heap - The Last Kiss - Hide and Seek

sweeeeeeeeeet. good find!thumbsupthumbsupthumbsup

[nonstatic]

her new album came out this week btw. really looking forward to seeing her live.

[Dean Roddey]

I love that tune also. I've been kind of casually watching her blogs over the last year or so as she's built her studio and worked on the album. She's very inventive in terms of finding sounds to use. Her version of Just for Now from that same appearance is really nice as well:

YouTube - Imogen Heap - Just For Now (Live) High Quality Audio

[TurboJets]

Awesome tune for sure. Tons of great stuff over the years from Imogene Heap. It's hard not to be a fan.