iMogen Heap
iMegaphone (Almo)
by Jamie Kiffel
Over a scored surface of tribal calls, grinding bass beats and insidiously groaning, industrially-machinated voices, the lascivious expression of atavistic sexuality is wholly defined by English singer Imogen Heap, whose product is arguably the heaviest and most startling audiotronic head rush next to a bullet to the brain. If Heap’s symphonic mixtures of religiously gentle piano spattered with demonic growls, cello-dark vocal tones, feline howls, rockstar shouts and in-your-ear subwoofer breaths don’t blow you out of your chair, you must be living in denial. Heap understands how to tune the emotions via sound. In “Getting Scared,” the first track on I Megaphone, a cat and mouse pursuit experiences a role reversal as ghostly echoes and deep, slow whispers evoke images of a spitting viper slithering its way through the speakers. The listener is thus introduced to his or her role as prey to this disc. We become subject to sudden dynamic changes, industrial outpourings in the midst of sweet lullabies, insistent, forward-marching trance chants, and adrenalized hooks made supercharged through orchestral instruments which brush strings and tiretracks with a wide catalog of machinery.
Heap possesses the versatile and eerie, sanctified (and often desecrated) piano of Tori Amos; the deep, rich tones of old jazz; the rat- and roach-filled darkness of Alice in Chains and, most importantly, a perfect dram measure of harnessed and holy terror. This may be most evident on “Rake It In,” a Gothic nightmare which begins with a lightly scraping undertone and builds to full grave dig before exploding into a carcrash cacophony complete with terrified screams. The anima is invoked and released here with all the beauty of an angel and the anger of a banshee. I Megaphone plays like a horror novel, insisting on paralytic attention until its moment of final resolution. This is as fanged and bloody as beauty gets. Dare to troll the jeweled abyss, and revel in the stunning pursuit of its guardian fiend.
(360 N. Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90048)
