Get the latest gossip

‘I’m empowering my song to go and make love with different people’: Imogen Heap on how her AI twin will rewrite pop

Known for her wild “Imogenation”, Heap has always reworked pop with tech, but her new data-mining project is her boldest yet. She explains why ‘you can’t stop progress’

Heap’s theatrically layered vocals and expressive production on albums Speak for Yourself (2005) and Ellipse (2009) influenced chart titans such as Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish and Kacey Musgraves, and popularised the use of the vocoder (later heard in the work of Kanye West and Bon Iver). Her dizzying span of projects include The Creative Passport, which imagines a more accessible way for musicians to store and share their personal data, and MiMU gloves, a pioneering wearable instrument which allows her to record loops of sound and add details such as vibrato or reverb in real time, with the flick of her wrist. A future version of Mogen will study the way Heap improvises and become a live collaborator at gigs, able to field fans’ musical suggestions in real time and feed off biometric and atmospheric data to create performances which feel “hyperreal”.

Get the Android app