Imogen Heap @ Metro Theatre,Sydney (22/03/10)

Tue 30th Mar, 2010 in Gig Reviews

Former Frou Frou frontwoman Imogen Heap has had it tough lately. Not only did she inadvertently leak her latest album, Ellipse, ahead of time (and rely on some diehard fans to bid it off Ebay) but her number one stage trick – vocal manipulation – has officially joined the mainstream.

It is the latter, the bastardising phenomenon of Kanyes and Ke$has, that makes tonight’s aural extravaganza is even more impressive, as Heap uses technology as an instrument rather than a gimmick, demonstrating once and for all just how far ahead of the curve she really is.

To call Heap ‘alternative’ would be a gross understatement. Here is a woman who thinks out loud between songs, attaches miniature microphones to her wrists so she can pick up percussion pieces wherever and whenever she sees fit and who advertised for a cello player to join her on stage in Sydney via her blog.

Like a thinner Reggie Watts or a feminine Jamie Liddell, Heap is particularly adept at looping her own voice and using all the noise sources available from inside her body to create soundscapes from scratch. The breathy brilliance of her vocal tone is something to behold, something she hides in electronica on record but gives ample space when she goes full throttle in the climax of tracks like Headlock.

Her innate understanding of the contours of music are similarly manifested in her multi-talented band, which includes a Warp Records DJ who mixes sounds in real time and a drumkit player who dashes between vibraphones and guitars, all while singing bass lines through a revolutionary microphone strapped to his Adam’s apple.

Simply put, Imogen Heap is spell-binding. The crowd, when they’re not singing along, spend most of the show in quiet awe of what’s happening in front of them. Nobody expects to see Hide & Seek played through a keytar or Tidal as a huge, Genesis-esque rock piece, but Heap takes more textures than a carpet sample book and manages to make them sound better than the Metro has for five years.

In fact, there’s more sound innovation on that small stage than in every album in the Top 40 at the moment. Heap closes the show by announcing that she’s coming back before the year’s out.