Lessons on Pain and Overthinking

Hello, welcome to Take Notes and our new episode with the wonderful Imogen Heap. Imogen invited us over to her beautiful hideaway studio just outside of London to talk through her long process, the inspiration and the stories and sounds behind her recent EP, I Am . It was a real treat to be able to go to the roundhouse where the Hydaway Studio is based. Such an incredible building, and it lived up to all expectation. I'd seen a few things online and thought wow it'd be brilliant to go there and then to do that and get to speak to Imogen was amazing. She is such a unique creator. It's so inspiring and so fascinating to hear how she approaches things. So that's our brand new episode. We filmed the whole interview, so if you'd like to watch the full video and see Imogen break down all the sounds in her mini Ableton sessions and some of the videos she mentions, head over to Patreon dot com forward slash take notes. Membership also gives you access to behind the scenes content, the chance to ask our guest questions , and entry to our monthly gear giveaway competition. This month's gear giveaway is a plug-in bundle from D sixteen group. All the details are on Patreon.com forward slash tape notes. A big thanks as well to our partners at Tape It. Tape It have just released their brand new denoiser which delivers instant studio quality audio by intelligently removing hiss, hum and background noise, completely preserving your sound without artifacts. Available as a desktop app and VST on a half price introductory offer of forty nine dollars. Head to tape dot it forward slash denoiser to give it a try for yourself. But now without further ado, let's get star ted. Hello and welcome to Tape Notes, the podcast that looks behind the scenes at the magic of recording and producing music. Every episode be we'll reuniting an artist and producer and talking through some of the highlights from their collaboration in the studio. So join us as we lift the lid on the creative process and the inner workings of music production to see what lies beneath . Hello, I'm John Kennedy, and joining me for this episode of Take Notes is Imogen Heap to talk about how she wrote, recorded, and produced the EP, I am. Imogen Heap is a British composer, artist and producer, widely regarded as a pioneer in electronic pop and music technology. A multi-instrumentalist, Imogen grew up immersing herself in music. By the age of 13 Continuing her studies at the Brit School, she released her debut album i Megaphone in 1998. Moving from alt rock into electronica, she went on to release four more critically acclaimed albums, including 2005 Speak for Yourself, featuring the globally recognized singles Hide and Seek and Headlock, the Grammy Award-winning Ellipse in 200 9 and Details as one half of the electro-pop duo Through Through. Her music has also been widely featured across film and television. She has received multiple award nominations, including a Grammy for her score to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and has collaborated as a writer and producer with artists such as Taylor Swift, John Hopkins, Dead Mouse, and Jeff Beck. An early adopter of social media, Imogen has long been at the forefront of integrating technology into her creative practice. Over the years, this has led to the development of tools including the Mimu gloves and more recently Mojin, an AI model trained on her own voice, making her one of the first artists to commercially deploy a private vocal replica for creative collaboration. A technology that also informs her latest record. The EP I Am released in October 2025. Today I joined Imogen at her Hideaway Stud From Speak for Yourself, this is Headlock . Just and flickering screen as scenery, I swear that's bringing it all back again . Great adventures, faces in condensation. I'm going outside to take it on You say too late the star got your heart in a head up I don't believe any of it You say too late the star with your heart in a header , you know you better than this . We're a different pair, just something out of steer. It is Headlock by Imogen Heap from the Speak for Yourself 20th Anniversary Remaster reissue. And I'm very pleased to say that I'm in the company of Imogen Heap. Hello Imogen. Hello, John. It's great to be here. So you've very kindly invited us into the hideaway at the roundhouse in Essex. And we're gonna explore the latest EP, the I am EP. But I thought it'd be a nice idea to start by playing Headlock because the reissue only came out in 2025 and Headlock and your music in general seems to connect and reconnect to different people all the time, a new gener ations are discovering you. So I think headlock went viral on TikTok at some point. Um, and people keep sampling your music and incorporating it into their own, and it's kind of an ongoing discussion and and debate evolution, which ties in nicely because, in many ways, that's what you are about as an artist as well. You're constantly questioning, constantly exploring, always looking to see how things are going to develop and change . And that's what you've been doing with the I am EP. That's right. So bearing all of that in mind, we're here to talk about I am. Yeah. How does that relate to the past and the present and the future. Yeah, good question. Well, for me I am is the point, it's the tipping point of which marks me never wanting to sit in front of the computer again in this way. I'm kind of looking, I'm so been looking forward to chatting with you about this song because I really just want to throw the computers out of the window now. This song nearly broke me. In fact, I would say it did break some of me and it's set me off on my path, which is something that I've always really wanted to do for so long, which is to develop and nurture more the live improvisation love that I have. Um, which is why I developed the Mimu Gloves many years ago, so that I could have music in my fingertips. Because I just don't want to be hunched over anymore. And I spent thousands of hours on this song, thousands. And I do think I actually lost my mind at one point, which we can talk about maybe. So I'm really grateful to be able to share the journey so that I can finally put it to bed because I kind of want to show my madness in a way. I want to show the the end of where technology can take us to the point where we become so obsessive and so can have hundreds and hundreds of tracks, which are often not the way needing to be. Um, and I've discarded so many hundreds of tracks along the way as well. And really for what? You know? It's not, you know, a track actually that has connected with people in the same way that say headlock or hide and seek has connected. But again, that took years. Maybe this will connect with people in 20 years. Um who knows if I'm still alive to experience the maybe the love that might come to this track. It's kind of fallen in a way in a in a a little bit in a ditch because it does have AI in the title, but I just couldn't mark this period of my life and the impact of AI on all of our lives when it was it was just coming into my work, it was coming into my daily life. I had to have it in some way memorialized. The point at which humans were starting to blur the creative output with AI, this is really the point for me. Because now we can't even tell the difference. And so uh I am is an EP, but it's also one song that is composed of three songs within that. Yeah. And we're going to look at all of those three songs. Yeah. And we're going to start with What Have You Done to Me, which is the opening part of the song. Yeah. So maybe if we hear a blast of the master of that, and we can start digging into how you created. Yeah, so this it was always meant to be one song, but it was never I never thought it would be longer than the initial four or five or six or seven minutes or whatever of what have you done to me. But then some things happened in my life where I felt it necessary to extend it and then more things happened and then it became another piece. So it was actually never meant to be three songs. It was always meant to be one piece. But for my sanity I had to release it before I'd finished it all because I was just going mad. It'd been four years since I'd started the first piece. And I just wanted to get it out so I could just get it out the door and not ever look at it again. Um and then get on with the the next two sections, finishing those. So yeah, let's play a little bit of the master What have you done to me ? That wasn't part of the plan . So now I'm gonna take it down So that's just a little taste of what have you done to me? And it poses that question, which seems to be the important question, and it can play apply to so many different things. You could view it personally, it could be the technology that you're talking about. How did you think of the question? What did it relate to when you came up with that? Well initially I started it for a few different reasons. Now normally starting a song is quite a big deal for me because I know I'm gonna have to carve out time to pay attention to that song and finish that song. So I have to have a really good few reasons to start. So one of the reasons might be I have time. Another reason might be it links to something else that I'm doing. So it's not just an outlier piece of music by itself because I have so many projects and other things that I do including being a mum. So usually it's like three different things that need to come to the point of being able to or m I feel like I need to somehow have a license to just like go ahead and start a song. Because once I started a song, I can't let it go. And then it will have a grip on me and I have to finish it. Um even though I have many unfinished songs. Um but this one I really didn't want to stop. So the main reason I started it was because I'd met a man. Um and his name was Petri and he's uh is actually on the film uh on the that we ended up making for this song. Um he's there as a thank you. I found him deeply inspiring. I met him on um I think it was Bumble. I was in the chair. I was in this chair called the listening chair, um, which is at the house in Hackney . And uh I was having many chats with my fans in this chair. Um because part of the project of listening chair is to create an AI agent for myself and for my fans to help us connect better so that I can never have to repeat myself twice and they can get the information that they want and it's becomes an interface really for myself and anything digital or anything knowledge. So in that chair one day they were like, oh why don't you sign up for a dating app, you know, because I was single. Um and I was like, oh I don't know, it felt a bit weird, Imagine Heat, kind of like the artist. Uh what would that be? What would that feel like? But I was like, okay, dear with it, I'll do it. And so I made myself a bumble uh whatever profile in front of the fans while I was doing it and I was like, what about this? What about that? And then later that night, some people matched or liked me. And the one person that I really liked, I was sitting on the canal um with my friend Maisie. And we were sitting down as I really look and see if there's any um, you know, potentials. Um and found this guy called Petri and I just I was like, wow. And she was like, oh my god, that guy, that guy is just so you. And he's got like peroxide blonde hair. Um amazing looking guy and into AI and all kinds of stuff. And so that night I met him and at like eleven o'clock at night we went for a walk into the local park. And I just really liked him and I was very uh swept up into his world and he introduced me to all kinds of amazing things and I wanted to impress him. One of the things he introduced me to was like, oh, it sounds like you need to be on Field, which is a different dating app, which is very open and exploratory, and a lot around power dynamics and BDSM and all kinds of stuff. And I was like, okay. Um, so I sound up to field. Uh we were in a kind of open relationship and it was very exploratory and fun. Anyway, so I was like, why don't you come to the ho use? Um, but I was very ex inspired by him and I wanted to create something that I thought he would like. So I did this early demo, and there's actually somewhere on Instagram from 2021, there's the early version of me excited, like saying to camera, I've got a new song. Then I played it to him and he wasn't impressed . That was deeply upsetting. Um but what came out of it was just this whole amazing journey and it helped me push myself further because it's not a good place to start, is it just to impress someone? I had to I had to go beyond that and so I really appreciate his honesty. Um are you are you gonna share a version of that now? Sure. Yeah yeah. So what I've got over here is one of the earlier sessions. This this whole song, by the way, took four years of my life. And the initial burst of an idea, which is almost identical to that, like the vibe is there, the lyrics are there, it's exactly the same dynam kind of dynamic and when the shifts happen. So that was all there. And I loved that bit. It was just later I just kind of, you know, just kind of sounded a bit fluffy. So yeah, I'll play you, I'll play you the session. So when I when I initially made this track, I was here. So this was where my studio was. As I started to need more time on the track, I actually moved my studio to Hackney. Um I had a much smaller kind of setup. But to be honest, all I really need is mostly what's in the box and some instruments. Yeah. So I just I worked on this computer, which eventually I just could not take it and broke. So yeah, I'll play you the beginning. Um but yeah, here we go. So this is still a year after I started. Obviously I wasn't working on it every day. I worked on it when I could, in between projects. And actually the reason why I started, oh that was the other reason I started was because at the time I was chatting with Splice because I was trying to find a connection between one of the projects that I'm doing called Oracles, A-U-R-A-C-L-E-S, an aura of a thing, of a person or a piece of IP , um, to see how we could create a through flow of dat a and keep incomplete the data around the works right up until distribution. So everyone was credited. But I didn't know how to use splice because I never used it. So the first thing that I kind of pulled up was this kind of clicky sound, which is really where the whole track came from . So pepper grinder drum loop. I'm pretty sure that almost entirely came from spice. And I was like, oh I really like that I really like the little clicky things there and from that built the whole track around it um I found a little synth and created this little bendy pad I just want it's a kind of pulsing sound the whole time. So it just changes um the pulsing synth sound just changes oh it's actually oh look still here. So you see all the are there any automations on here Anyway, you can see there's lots of movement going on. Very simple pad, but it just changes the uh effect at some point. And that was basically for this section of the song, for the What Have You Done to me, that is basically the premise of the whole song, which is like it's the same kind of this kind of bass line, do do do do do do the drums are kind of quite phonetic and they get busier and busier and it's all about the dynamic change the whole way through because there's actually no repeating lyrics apart from the line what have you done to me and there's no actual chorus in a way it's just a repeating phrase so it's more like a stream of consciousness um and what have you done to me, the word happens on the change. On the what have you done to me changes into minor or goes to the whatever kind of relative But the the whole effect is quite hypnotic though, isn't it? So we're linked into that, we're drawn into that and hooked by that. As opposed to you know, say if we are looking for a chorus or looking for yeah other structure. Yeah, yeah. So that's basically yeah, that's the main elements and they come they came very quickl One of you turns me . Yeah. Not really well sound . That was part of the way . So now we're gonna take it Yeah, I really love that. That kind of dung dum. Technically , I just love this sandwich. This is another kind of theme . That's just going through this this device here. But most of the things that I'm using on this track are because I did go to my like lighter setup, um, are using quite a lot of just basic Ableton effects. Um but I really love this kind of phasey effect. That's a big theme as well throughout the track . It's so it's so simple. See what why did I have to spend four years on it? So nice. And and it's really effective, I think. I mean because of course they've got the contrast with your vocal and and so I mean it wasn't negative. It just wasn't like overwhelmingly positive. It was more like, yeah, it's okay. Um I find you know, the end section, which it did just go on and on and on forever. I was like trying to turn it into a techno track or something. And he was just like, I don't know if you need the bass quite so much or something, you know, fair. Um and he was right. And uh I did it in the end after a couple of years. Uh change it so it did move chords and everything and it had like a bunch of a bunch of stuff. But you know, had he not said that, maybe I'd have just gone, Oh yeah, so you think it's good, right? Therefore it must be good. Um, doubting my own intuition. But I guess the important thing is that it started a series of events in a way because it got you thinking and also questioning what you were trying to do with the track and and what it should be and where it was going to go and then that led you to create these other parts for it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean I had the whole, you know, like four or five minutes of the track pretty much in its stayed form. Again, it was the set that same motif where you changed the key and the dynamic change or the instrumentation changes, those kind of abrupt changes. Because of the lyric as well, what have you done to me? Oh, here's a change. And initially it was about power dynamics in the bedroom. Or not in the bedroom, in a park, wherever. It was around naive kind of first explorations in that space with me, because he presents very dom But it was me pay basically going, Oh yeah, well you think you're that do you? Oh, well, I'm gonna do this. Obviously, I know that's not what the deal is now. But I think there was just some kind of playful naivety in the lyrics back then that I a little bit cringe about now. But for me, that was also part of the journey and I'm happy that it's there. I'm happy that there was this learning space in the beginning. And I'm happy the song's there because I love it. And I love the darkness of it. And I love the beautiful ethereal kind of vocals over the top of it. And then it goes into this, yeah, these other sections later which kind of justify in a way the naivety of it because there's this beautiful message that comes at the end of the song and it is about the ego. This is just me going, Oh yeah And in the end it's just like that's gone and I really love that. And that that that was a real change for me, uh a real development that I needed to learn, I think, because I was just kind of cruising along, not really looking into that side of things. I'd just been on a non-stop path since I was like 15 of just making tracks, making tracks, making tracks, going out, making tracks. All about music, music, music, music. Never really done any major amounts of self-development, like not really looked that closely at kind of physical contact, always relied on music as my partner in a way, which is what the whole noise section is about. We can talk about that later. Yeah. Um 'cause that was a realisation really of what music had become to me to the point where it b gripped me so much to the point that I would spend so many hours and basically miss out on life and nobody cares. Oh well you care about detail. Yeah, yeah. Well we do. But I mean you say nobody cares. There's still you know a million point five or six uh one point six million people have streamed what have you done to me on Spotify. That's just on Spotify, that's just one streaming service. So it is conne cting with a fair amount of people, I would say. Um and so in terms of um this particular song, before we move on from it, because it moves on into noise and that's the evolution, but going from what you've shown us there in terms of sound and recording, are there other permutations we should be looking at? Like what was the next stage or do I mean there is there is a whole lifetime's worth of information if you'd like to know it, of iterations and when people came into my life and what changed and other sounds that came in and all kinds of stuff. I mean maybe we could just for fun, because I haven't listened to this session in so long, I could just hear, like, oh my god, I forgot it was like that. Sure. So maybe we could go to um because there are bits that are very different from this version. Um so I've got some auditing on there because I'm just like done a late night vocal. So in the in the l ater version there's like a million vocals happening here and all kinds of other sounds and things panning around. But again, it is the core of it is is here The dynamics are sound. This melody goes How many more permutations after this until you get to the finished version of the song. I mean the thing this has still some MIDI information with some virtual instruments that later the computer just couldn't handle it because there was hundreds of tracks. So I mean, maybe you could yeah, I think what's nice to see is just that like they're actually just like off the Ableton shelf um uh kind of simple stuff that started it. And that's what I love about Ableton is that you could just quickly ch chuck things in. I use it live as well. Um in fact I think this might be the first track that I fully mixed in Ableton, because before that I was very much Pro Tools and would go to Pro Tools Pro Tools to Mix. But this one, I learnt a lot about Ableton as well, about how it um how it deals with bouncing, how it deals with bitrate, and all kinds of details that we kind of felt like we lost. Um not having the knowledge of how it processed the files and when you had to set things off and all kinds of things that spent literally months on the the problem of bass and drums. Um but let I don't know, I mean let's hear how rubbish uh the end section sounded. Let's do that. Um there's no strings in here at this point. There's none none of my friend Irene Amnus who came in and gave me some amazing modular sounds. Um let's listen to this section. I think that was another splice sound that came quite early on was I specifically liked how it came out of a high meant a high voice. That for me was like a key thing which I never wanted to lose because that came quite early on. Okay, so it all sounds really rubbish. What have you done to me ? This has changed a lot Okay. And when you're finding a sound that you like on Splice, do you then process it a lot? Do you change it and modify it a lot? Yeah, yeah. I mean with the clicky sound, I don't know if I'll be able to find the original, but it was very close to that. Um, I would have like slightly swapped around. It's just only one one loop, but it is very key uh to the whole track, that kind of rhythm, certainly in the first half. I think I kind of took it out second half eventually. I think one of the things that really changed it for me was meeting this artist, Irene Amnes , because this was all just kind of like, oh, it's doing that thing, it's doing that thing, it's doing that thing forever and ever and ever. But when I worked with this person , I mean she sent me this incredible sound and it changed the whole way that I wanted to do this the track after this . At this point we didn't have the death voice as we called it . Yeah about four minutes thirty or something this this crazy noisy deep voice comes in. Is that the death voice you're talking about? Yeah, because before it just did this . This is really bad. So here it would have happened. Yeah, it's just that. Yeah. Um and then it stays on that the whole way through. And my pop my my hope was to just gonna just to make it like really, really dancy. It was just repeating the same thing over and over again. This is what I actually was like So that's in that version. So m Irene and the Death Voice, are you able to show that is that in the the next session session. Um should we leap into that? Let's leap into that then, yeah. Exciting though. I mean you made it seem Imogen as if it's all been pretty intuitive and you you know, you met this person, you responded to that and created this song, but you're kind of working in the moment, you're finding a sample, chucking it in, changing it, moving on. Yeah, and and it's it's all moving forward all the time and you're responding to both situation and sound. Yeah. And to your imagination.. Yeah Which is all exciting and intuitive. Yes. No, to be honest, the first, you know, that whole when I had a chance to get to the track, when there wasn't like a million sessions and there wasn't, you know having to be around with my daughter and all that stuff. I I really was just dying to get into the track because I loved it so much um and I could really see where it was going. It just became really difficult when when I felt like the level, the standard of it needed to go so much different, which it did, because this was all like playful, but by that time I'd had I had hundreds of tracks, so many ideas. And that's in a way the kind of problem of having all the time in the world um because maybe you don't need to release a track well nobody does release a track for money anymore do they let's face it um but there's no like you know record label gnawing at me just going come on I need to put a new record out. So it's just kind of just it could just go in and on and on and on and on. But as a result of that, just did lots of unnecessary things. Like I probably spent, even with that version, which I wouldn't have used, maybe I don't know, an extra hundred hours just on kind of doing little things with the drum loops and reversing things. But in the end I would have just completely ditched all of that and just gone with the other thing. Yeah. But I had to live the life to get through this track. Yes. And that's the kind of yeah, it's like method music making or something. Um, you know, you have method acting, you have to kind of be the part and live the part. And I did live the part. I lived the part of kind of R and D um with BDSM and lived the part of meeting this noise artist, uh flesh slicker as well, and Irene, which I'll talk about, and just had so much personal development that happened during that time. But it was hard to find the real time, and then I was diagnosed ADHD and I started taking a course of pills, which really was I'd love to give a little word of warning to anyone who does that, who is also autistic, which I later discovered, because it fed an obsession of having to make things look as perfect and kind of get rid of anomalies because I could see them on the screen, that I just went thousands of hours spent just like drawing out anomalies which nobody ever will ever hear and will would never have known and I was driving myself insane. I was actually almost like I don't know if somebody wanted to give up smoking maybe they'd like, like I did when I was younger. Um, smoke a whole pack of like really strong cigarettes and then eat them. Like eat the ones that I didn't just like to do anything to make yourself so sick of it that you just never do it again. Um it didn't entirely work, but it worked for a bit. And it's the same almost with this. I just wanted to make myself so sick of it, so sick of my obsession for perfection, which ultimately I didn't I never reached, that it it just made me ill to the point where I don't want to do it now, which is good because I have wanted to for the longest time wanted to create music more in the moment, in the present moment, and assimilate what's going on in the world and be better at writing lyrics in the moment. So it has pushed me there, which is good. Um by by asking you to do this. Um so as you open up the session that we're next going to dig into the next iteration of what have you done to me. So Irene, you mentioned is uh a pivotal to the evolution of the song. Yeah, a hundred percent. So Irene Amnest, who I now consider a very good friend, and I'm actually gonna go and see her tomorrow in Berlin. So I went with Petri. I was hanging out in Berlin with Petri and we went to go and see I can't remember her name, um, a Japanese artist who was using an EEG brain interface for music creation and one of the projects of this uh can one of the many versions of this was around exploring that can I get myself into a brain state that I'll talk about later to do with noise and the impact of noise that has on my body and change my life. Um so we went to Berlin and we went to see this lady, but she didn't have a brain interface thing. So I watched this artist called Irene Amnus come on and she didn't have a screen anywhere near. She had loads of modular equipment. And she just created the most incredible music in this place called the Funk House in Berlin. And my jaw hit the floor, and I was just so inspired by her. I'd never seen somebody also because it's just not in my circles. Now it very much is, and I'm aware of lots of different artists who don't use screens. Um but in you know my commercial space everyone's using Ableton and all that stuff. So it's really inspiring and she just created there was not one moment in the set which was quite long, like an hour and a half, which I didn't like and usually like, oh I don't like this one I'll go and get a drink. But I loved everything. And at the end I just had to go up and say to her, you know, there's not that many people, maybe a hundred people or a couple of hundred people. And I went up after and I said, Oh my God, that was just the most incredible thing. Uh who are you? And I love you and I want to know more about you. And so she told me her name and then I looked her up on Instagram later and I sent her a message and she was like, Oh my god, Image in Heap. Wow. I'm like, I'm so amazed that you were there and you know if you ever want to make a track together. And I was like, Well actually I do. Um I was because I had this song which had got further down the line, but it just n I just wanted something else and because I'd met her with Petri, it felt symbolic and I was like, I would actually love some drama to come in into the noise section. So she sent me these so many amazing sounds. So so she uses modular synthesizers, that's what you're saying. So so she creates these and evolves them and they kind of evolve themselves, yeah. Maybe with the patterns that they create. Yeah. Exactly. So she sent me a a like I don't know, 60 tracks of like drum sounds and samples and that she sampled of her own doing moments of improvisation with her setup. And we both bonded over this piece of equipment called the Soma Lyra. We both have this machine which is the most incredible noise making machine. Um so there's a lot of Lyra uh in this session. And then I just took everything and I just kind of quickly went through and had a great time just shaping and sculpting and chucking stuff against this and that. But there's one particular sound, which is this like massive like you know, sounds like a thunderstorm crash of a kick drum which just was like that thing is the thing and then it shaped the whole rest of the journey of the track. So I'm gonna try and find it . Oh I haven't at this point I also have a really good friend called Ian Burge. Um at this point I was back in I was in Hackney, the highway hackney, uh in my bedroom basically, working when I could through the night. And I asked my dear friend Ian if he could just record a bunch of cello lines. So there's starts to come in all this lovely cello sounds. So in here now we have cellos. And then he recorded them all at home and sent them over to me and I kind of chucked them in. We felt nice. So you can start to hear strings in hand So that thing basically. Everything else too. So that was created by your son Olira? Yeah, no, that was created by Irene. That oh right, okay. That particular like big base kicky thing which I'm going to find. I'm gonna find it. I'm gonna find it. Is it all the cellos you wanna hear all the cellos? Let's hear all the cellos that no one will ever hear because I never used anything so lovely. So spent absolutely hours putting all these together tuning and timing and nobody will ever hear that. And then it gets more And everyone's like, just you should have just left it there, Imogen. It's rubbish. Like why didn't you keep the cellos in? Anyway, um okay, let's get to this point, shall we? Base massive. Oh that sounds There you go. That's it . So she sent that. And it was like unlike anything I'd had on the track so far. And when I heard that, I was like, that's it. At this point, the track needs to just stop and it needs to make way for this big sound. And then we need to have the death voice come in. So that's when I pitched my vocals down. So instead of like, you know, well, let's try and find all the vocals, shall we? Um I spent a very long time working even harder on the vague, so that's not actually the end of vacuum. So here I again I would have just they're probably already still pitched down on a no these were the process. Anyway, I would have just I'm pretty sure I just used the Ableton like pitch it down change the formants so it didn't sound like it was trying to sound like me. And then to make it sound bit creepy, just chose lots of other bits of me. Just kind of backward stuff and editing that together. Um and then getting that big reverb thing from somewhere which might still be in it. But like making sure there's lots of automation. Because it goes from it goes that's uh that's mono. When it goes to that in the mix, you'll see it just goes whew and then 'cause her sample was originally mono. I did actually automate quite a lot of the stereo feel just I played a lot with the stereo feel just kind of jumping in, jumping out to create extra drama. But anyway, so that that was one of the many sounds that she sent me. Um well and then shall we hear all of that in the mix? Let's do it. And the effect it has. Yes . Okay, this is basically why I ended up having to bounce everything down to stems because CPU is just like stuff. Those are loads of sounds you can't hear now because it's not playing them. Okay . That was my reality and that took a long time to sort out. And actually that was one of the most annoying things, wasn't it, of just like bouncing it down because e ever ything has gates on it and there's all these different like dynamics between the kick and the snare and the the bass and the vocals and everything's everything's on like you know, compressors that are side-chained and all that stuff. And in order to bounce down and get the separation, it was just like it was so annoying. It was so annoying. We did it so many times. So, in terms of um the song you've created this noise um i inspired and enabled by Irene and then you decide to respond to the noise in a way with a death voice um that is you but pitched way, way down. And the combination together ends up like this. Yes, that's right. Let's see where we get to. Okay, this is coming into that same section. The lyrics you can hear are all completely different here, the melodies completely different. Yeah Oh there's a bell there that comes from the church and uh my friend's uh has the bell that appears outside of his window. And so here there's actually like about 50 piano tracks that you can't hear. Um but there's a piano in the background there it comes in and you'll hear it was about two years in that I decided actually I'm gonna move the chords so it goes from that one . Yeah. Because before that it was just one long I was just trying to stick to this kind of like it's gonna be techno. Right. Um and then eventually just like come an image and just get rid of that idea. You're never gonna be techno . And then it goes up another and this is where it stays on the on the route for the last bit and we hear the bells in the background There's also a bridge from um Lisbon, a singing bridge that's in quite a lot of this which you can't hear . You can hear the noise starting to come through . And then we go into the noise sector . So even before I met Irene, I had met this person called Michael, whose stage name is Flesh Licker. And again, there's another Petri connection here. So one of the things that happened after after I played Petri, the very early version of this track, um, he was like, I'd like to play you something and so he played me this piece of music by an artist called Prurient and the music was called Despiritualiz ed. And he put it on in here, it says really loud. And I was just sitting opposite him, like, you know, a bit over here, but you and me, him and me there. And he started playing this track, and it had the most profound effect on my body. I felt like I was possessed. The music was noise, didn't know where it was going. It felt like I had no I couldn't predict where it was going and it made me feel so literally I spent my whole life trying to make organized sound into pretty paintings and, you know, perfect all little details and take the j the listener on a journey. And I find it hard to connect with a lot of music because my brain works and my brain's kind of thinking about, oh, it's gonna go there, it's gonna go there, it's gonna go there. And I recognize that the reason why this piece of music had such a profound impact on me is that my pleasure point, and maybe all of our pleasure points, is where we are just on the edge of chaos, where our brain feels like, oh, this is chaos now. That's not a pleasurable place. But just ahead of it, where you still have some connection to structure and time and harmony melody, and just at the the fulcrum of this kind of point where you tip into chaos, that's where the pleasure point is.' Its it's like, oh my god, it's so it's kind of so exciting, and you you just feel alive, you're in the moment, you're you're not you're kind of a little bit out of your depth, you don't really know where it's going, but you're still with them and they're taking you on a journey. And and and there's something about that was happening on a like another level to the point where my I'm not even joking and I wasn't on any substances or any alcohol. He was he's totally teetotal every every way. And I found my body was like, it was literally like a poltergeist if there wasn't such a thing. Maybe there is, who knows? Um, just was kind of taking over my body. And I was but the end of this piece of music, which is about twenty minutes long, my eyes were rolling back, I was like on the floor, just completely out of breath, not knowing what the hell just happened. And because I was so infatu ated with this person, I actually thought it was like magic. I thought he had some kind of dark magic that I'd never come across and that he was somehow doing that. And I was like, what the what the hell was that? Um, he was like, I don't know what you mean. And I was like, what are you doing? Like, why am I here like on the floor now? It's like I don't know. And I just thought, you know, I was just all in the rush of love, early love and this kind of obsession and but then it happened again like when I went out to a a gig with him uh he took me to this Tottenham kind of warehouse same thing happened with a DJ I was just leaning up against the wall being completely just taken on by this music like it was of some kind of power on me. And I just needed to get to the bottom of it. And then the last time it happened, well, in this period of time, I went to see this uh these artists with Petri in an underground bunker, uh again, I think somewhere in Tottenham. And there was maybe like twelve people there, and there were these three noise artists, and one of them particularly was called Fleshligger. And he was barely wearing anything. It was all red light. And I was standing there kind of like holding on to Petri, who's very strong by the way. Um and just standing there going, Oh, this is so cool. I'm loving this, like I love this life, it's crazy good. And then Fleshlicker came on and he spent quite a long time tweaking his noise, but basically then he just set it off and it was pink noise that was being gated by some kind of modular gate thing, and really loud, massive speakers. And then he was half naked and he was coming around to each of us like being a kind of emotion. So so the first time he was he went to this person, he was like maniacally laughing at them and they felt deeply uncomfortable. But I think he was kind of showing them you're not cool. This just because we're here doesn't mean you're cool. He was trying to like I don't know, it was just it was antagonistic. Um and I was looking at him going, wow this is this is crazy, I've never seen anything like this, you know and this guy kind of started off being like, ha ha yeah yeah like kind of like trying to be cool. And then in the end he was like, you know, really kind of freaked out by him and then I really wanted him to come up to me and then he came up to me and he gave me the kind of death stare like I'm gonna kill you look and I had this amazing feeling which was like excited by it like, just genuinely like euphoric. I don't know, it wasn't like happiness, it was just purity or something. It was just this is an undeniable feeling that I'm having and I'm so happy about it. Because there's so there's so many things that are ambiguous in life. And it was just like, I'm feeling this person right now. And I reached out to him and kind of like as if to say, I feel you and thank you kind of look. Anyway, I was really struck by it, and I sent him a message later that night and I was like, Hi, I was really amazing. I was the person that you know touched you the hand or whatever. And he was like, oh my God, Imogen Heat, what were you doing at a bunker? You know, I was like, I was with this guy. And he said, if you ever need any noise, just let me know. And I'm like, well actually I do. So same thing happened. I said, Well please can we can we do that? But just like in my barn. Can you come to my barn? Bring your setup. And he lives somewhere like Portsmouth and he doesn't really like travelling very much. So um but he came and we had a day setting up. In fact, I've got I took some pictures because I thought it'd be interesting to show you. He came to my barn and Basically that was it. That's in the day. So this is Michael, aka Flesh Licker, in your barn, with what look like two massive amps with a uh head on top of that. Yeah. And and he's just making the noise in the barn and you're recording this. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But this was just the day setup. So we were just like setting it up and then we went out for a nice walk and into the fields and it was very nice. And then we came back and then it was night. And then he was like, right, how long do you want me to do the noise for? And do you want me to modulate it? I was like, no, I don't want you to modulate it. I want to kind of emanate kind of what we did that night, where you came up to me and you stared at me, and I want to put it at the end of this track. Because basically, after I played this track to Petri, then he played me this prurient piece. I was trying to see if I could emulate this feeling somehow in other people by going the noise direction. So I said I don't think anyone's gonna listen to it for longer than like five minutes. So let's just do like five-minute recording and just like do whatever you want, just like stare at me, or not, or I don't mind, I just wanna I don't we kind of really want to know, but I'll record everything so he's like okay so I won't modulate so he set it off and then he stripped down entirely naked and I wasn't expecting that I was pretty close and I was like, wow, this is a very vulnerable experience here of on both sides. And I was deeply moved and also had so many conflicting emotions, like this is very I find this very sexual, but I don't know if I'm allowed to touch this as a performance, I mean what's going on. There was so many grey areas, and I just found and I felt so alive in it. Um, but also constant questions, but at the same time, in the noise, this deep peace. Um, because there's no thing involved. It's just you can't think. You literally can't think it's like white nice game in your in your ears. But then there was always this kind of waking up out of this and just going, Well, should I be touching him? Or what should should I get on the floor? What should I do? And all just like all my insecurities coming out. And then exactly five minutes, he just stopped. He stopped the noise and then he walked to the back of the room, to the barn, this huge barn in the garden. And then just stared at me in the silence. And I wasn't expecting that either. And I just broke down into tears for like the most wailing tears I've ever done. And I had no idea why, because I found it deeply amazing. I was like felt so lucky to be there. But I was just so , so crying. I didn't know if it was sadness or overwhelm. I didn't know what it was. And then he came up to me after a while and just I thought he was gonna give me a hug and be like, it's okay, yeah. Are you okay? But he didn't he just kind of held my hand loosely and just was like, okay, well I'll pack down then, yeah. And I was like, Yeah, and then just still was in this complete otherworldly space in my head, and I couldn't really have the conversation with like, oh, how was it for you? I couldn't do that. So I just left the barn and I walked to a view that's here in the dark, and I saw London in the distance, and it was a nice night. But after about 15 seconds of walking out of the barn, the feeling that came up was the feeling of loneliness. And I was like, wow, I'm feeling lonely. You know. And I realized that in my life I've never felt lonely. I've always had music. I've always gone to the piano, I've always maybe never really fully dealt with things because I've always gone, oh, musical. So it I recognized that in the noise, maybe my relationships with people were never going really fully that deep because I'd always give that time and attention to music. And it was this massive kind of like realiz ation that made me think about all kinds of things. Because it's funny. It's like I was like basically, I'm killing my baby here. I'm killing the babies of because that's one of the the things is like, oh if you're in a student you don't know what to do next, kill your babies, kill them the thing that you most like. And then all of a sudden there'll be all this space left about what to do next. So I was thinking, is this me killing my baby? You know, do I need to kill music in my brain? Do I need to kind of remove it with this attachment that I have onto it in order to fully experience life with other humans in a trusting open space because I'd always kind of hide hidden away and been quite um hermit-y. Anyway, so that was the reason that I wanted to put the noise in. And then I sent I sent Fleshligger Michael back the first mix of that, which was interesting, but I just felt like it was nowhere near enough. No one was gonna listen to like five minutes of just noise. So I I started to edit it a bit, but I knew then that I was gonna have a big old j job now because what I needed to do was I needed to find in the spaces of the noise, that's when the clarity came out in these bursts. And so I went through my phone and I found hundreds of vide os, uh, visual moments of really euphoric and or big events like my sister dying, going to a club with a friend or sunset or whatever, just like my mum talking, like bunch of stuff and then weaved them into the noise, like they were coming through, like little bursts of like and then so you have all these vignettes of sounds, and it took me absolutely ages, but it is the m my most favourite thing I've ever done, which is the noise section. Because I feel like it's verging on original. Maybe it's not. But when people listen to it, what I hope happens is something unearth because there is this chaos. And then there's oh there's a little vignette of something that might remind you of something and what's stirring under there. And so this whole section became to be about that, like what's there . And then I spent an inordinately long time gating these effects and then working on the sound, the stereo space and pulling you in and out and kind of drawing in and out noise sections so that you just have these very particular points and like yeah, very detailed. But I I loved every second of it. I never not didn't enjoy that. I I really felt like this is an area I could just be so happy in all the time. I wonder what the best way of approaching this is. So the actual track noise is a minute 53 . Yeah. So you have all of that yeah in that. I wonder whether the best way is to just play it and you talk us through the different sections as we hear them. Alright. So so basically we're coming out of the the end of the song, um, and you start to hear the noise that Fleshlicker created, which is a s it is a continuous pink noise gate. That's it. There's no like music in it or um it's just a stereophile. And what I wanted to do was I wanted to have it almost like the noise is breaking through into the track. So just before we we go into the noise you start to hear the noise going if you listen. You're not probably not noticing it because we're just hearing all the music, but if I play you a bit , you can kind of hear in the top bits . And here it's like shh spinning around and then it breaks. Um I did quite a lot of enjoying myself shouting. Uh there's loads of shouting and just ahead of that . So this is me speaking with Scout about my sister's death. That scout saying say hello Bowdy . I mean Scout being your daughter just in case we could. Yeah. These are the insecurities that I wanted to record so no one will ever love you . So all of these sounds like that's all flesh liquid. Everything else has come out of that . That's a picture taken at a Christing . Oblivion. This is the church bell from uh Alexis Garden. All these years Scout talking about some electric thing happening . Scout and have her cousin Ava hand doing a little hand thing . Um this is Scout saying, I love it. It was her birthday. That's her dad, who's in the room. Anyway . I'll never find happiness I love watching people listen to that for the first time. Because everyone thinks it's finished and they kind of relax and then it just says and everyone's like And then the breath . So yeah . For me, it takes me on a like journey through time over the last 10 years of since being a mum, um, particular pivotal moments, and combined with sounds that are not necessarily , you know, specific, like with words and voices, which I hope also draw out like the sound of a click, you know, what would that remind you of? Like a an old school camera click sound, what would that remind you of? Or a kind of siren going on in the background or somebody shouting and it is this whole section for me is the annihilation of the self or the the the ego trying to rip it out of me. And so there's a bit in here where you hear um Mike screaming his head off, going, Ah so our perception of that is oh something awful must have been happening. You know, but actually it was just Scout holding her hands onto his eyes and they were in a farm and he was just joking, going, ah and then I just made it sound really terrifying. But it's actually it's all about the perception, like you know, what is good, what is bad, what are we seeing? I mean, it's not black or white, you know, it's not it's not a clear answer. There's so many variations of stories and everything right now online and just the horrible things that are happening in the world and that's just like there's nuance and we're not getting the nuance at all and that is so much a problem. Um and it's also about me destroying a structure and harmony and melody and getting rid of that and finding the peace in the noise and the joy in the noise, the joy in the chaos, the joy in the unknown. I want people to feel present in this. I want them to feel like fully engaged and they're not like drifting off thinking about the groceries. They're like completely you can't think during that. And that's the point. Having a thought, great. But overthinking, and I have many overthoughts about this. Yeah. Um so that's what that was for me. And I really enjoyed the um spatializ ations and I've spent a lot of time using this uh plugin called Panorama. It's just like a like a binaural panor and really worked hard on getting all that stuff like super, super tight. So it's really like a exciting roller coaster of a journey. Um yeah. I think uh to to round that off maybe we should have a reprise of the end section rising up as we talk. Yeah. Silly, isn't it? It's just so much I think it's so much. I think it's great. You do. Did you have any epiphone kind of like moments? What did you Listening to it. Did you have you heard it in its entirety? I have listened to it a few times on my own. Yeah. Um but mainly through a laptop speaker. So I don't think that's the word the right way to listen to it. But your description of it and your breakdown of how it was created allow me to um reference it to other things that I've experienced that I can see how you know because I've gone to noise events uh and and encountered that kind of volume that arrests you and stops you in your tracks and physically attacks you. Yeah, but also can have a real impact in a different kind of way. And and I I think your explanation of that is really fascinating. Yeah. But I do think like that should we reprise it and then we can move on. I think I think that's the best way. Oh. Okay, so I'll just play the last little bit of that. Um So there's a lyric in the first section of the song which is you can't breathe. And then there's a point where you're kind of you're trying to breathe. So this is the first time that I breathe out after this whole noise section, which again nobody will know, but that's now we know. Um there's a lot of breath about about this. And breath, I've learnt during this period of time how important breathing is. I know that sounds so obvious. Because also during this period I did I was going through some tricky times and it was in the noise space where I discovered, okay, I need to go deeper. I need to like, I'm not paying attention to the now. I'm off in projects. I'm over here doing thousands of hours on this one track. Why am I doing that? What I need to get to the bottom of things. I also had a sprained ankle, I think. And I met this person called Ola, who I see often now, like once a week or so. Um, a kind of a check-in, like a life coach, but she also does physio, she's amazing. And it was also my friend John Hopkins who introduced me to this breathing, Wim Hof breathing. And he doesn't do that. He does the different types of things now. But I kind of, he'd said, oh, would you like to come over and you know, have a breathing session with me. I was like, that sounds cool. Okay. He lives very close to me. And so I turned up and he was like, okay, so we're gonna lie on the floor, he put on some music, and then he kind of guided me through this breathing process. And all it is is you kind of like breathing in quite heavily, breathing out, just letting it go, breathing in, breathing out, and you get kind of quite dizzy, and then then you hold your breath in for a bit, and then you breathe out, and then you hold your breath out for a long period of time. And he said to me before I started, I said, um, whatever you do, you're gonna think that you wanna breathe, but you've actually got absolutely tons of oxygen in your br in your brain and your body. You don't need it. It's just your it's just your um reflex after all these years of breathing one and breathing out, breathing breathing out. So I was like, okay. And so I did it. I trusted him and I held my breath out past the point of which I felt like, oh, I need to breathe. I passed that point, past that point. Got into a minute or so, which I've never tried. And then we did it again. And then it was longer and longer. And in that space, discovered this period or this kind of feeling which felt similar to the noise where I kind of dissolve and I wasn't really I I'm hyper-present, but I'm also not think ing. And in that space is like myself and matter no longer matter. I'm just I'm dust. I don't have any edges. And then there's this light in my head of this beautiful cerulean blue and yellow. I don't know what that is, but it's just very lovely. And my whole body starts to ting le. Um, I guess it's like your brain dying. I don't know. Um anyway, and when you breathe in, there's this euphoric feeling and this kind of sound that you hear in your ears. And I thought it was a filter of the music that was going on in the background. I was like, wow, that's cool how the filter kind of happened at the same time. He was like, No, no, no, that's your brain doing that. Well, that's your ear. That's your that's you doing that. You know, that's a physical response to your body holding its breath. And I was like, wow, that's super cool. So there's a here you hear it kind of coming out of the is like that memory for me. And so I realized because this aftercare Originally it was just gonna end on the noise, but because I remembered had that feeling of being with Flesh Licker in the barn was so upsetting. But that I was also grateful to have had that period of time where I could think about what just happened, where I could go off and discover that it was loneliness. Whereas if the equivalent of what might have happened as he might have gone, oh hey you're so sorry, you okay, then I would never have come to that realization and I wouldn't have had this whole journey of realizing what maybe I've been lacking um in depending on music. And so for me it was almost like is this what music, the way we consume and listen and engage with music is so fast. It's like one emotion and then another emotion and another emotion, another emotion, another. No, we don't like that emotion for 30 seconds or 10-5 seconds, the next emotion. And we're just like gorging on these multiple emotions daily and never really processing anything and I thought it would be awful to leave people at the end of noise and then just go straight into Beyonce or whatever might be on their playlist. Just complet ely destroy any hope of having a realization of what might come out of the noise. So that's why aftercare is there. Because I lacked, I didn't have the aftercare, but in a way I had the aftercare to myself in the walk. So the whole kind of breathing, being in the moment is so integral and important and in this section to me. And initially I thought it was just going to be a long tale, like a long minute and a half or whatever, just kind of deca y where you would just soft land. But actually as I was kind of I had all these amazing synth sounds from Irene and and then I was really trying to push against doing more lyrics because I was like, oh lyrics always take me so long, overthinking them before I'd actually just done them. And then one night I was like, no but just about the time where I was like, this is done now. I was like, no, it really needs to have lyrics. Come on, imagine stop it. Just like go and write the lyrics. So it was like three in the morning, I wrote something quick in my diary and it was these were the words. Here and now is all there is what comes before and after this. I made of moments just like this. So take a breath and breathe, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Everything that you already have is everything you already are, or everything you already are is everything you already need. You know, basically just going, stop searching out there to find happiness in whatever next project or whatever next meeting or whatever thing, whatever it is, you've already got it. It's already here. You just have not noticed that you're actually underneath all the chaos, underneath all the the needs and wants and whatever, then it''llll you be happy then, you'll be calm, then you'll stop working, whatever. It's already there. It's just we don't know it. And that's what the breathing thing taught me with John. Yeah. And with Ola. So I think holding that thought, you have very nicely set up Aftercare, and that's the next song we're going to look at. So we'll take a quick break there. And then we will hear Aftercare. Okay, cool . This episode is supported by Cube, the world 's first member studio for artists, producers and all round creatives. With over eighty professional studios across four London locations, Cube gives you the space, tools and community to make great music and develop your career. And today I'm joined by Nicholas Schoeniger, co-founder of Cube to tell us more. Hi Nick, what does a Cube membership do for music makers? Hey John, so look I mean with Cube membership you get access to a whole host of things. First of all, you get the studios. you So've got music production rooms, DJ studios, podcast studios, and content studios, all bookable through our app 247. You also get access to events ranging from networking to industry talks to hands-on workshops. We've got amazing co-working spaces that you can come and hang out in, bars where you can socialize. And really, the whole ethos is to bring like-minded creatives together and inspire each other as well as have a professional space to work. All of this happens across our four London locations in H ackney, Elephant and Castle, Canary Wharf and Acton. So if I'm a music maker and I've outgrown my bedroom studio, or maybe I'm someone who just needs access to a space with professional gear, how do I get involved? Super easy, just head over to the Cube website and apply for a membership. Application takes a couple of minutes. All we look for is a certain level of talent. You know, we're not looking at how many Instagram followers you've got. We just want to see that you're serious about your craft. And then, you know, in terms of once you come into the Cube community, you're going to meet a whole host of people, whether it's people that are just starting out on their career but are super talented, through to people that have got platinum cuts. Really we're about people that are always looking to up their skills and collaborate and be inspi And how does the membership work at Cube? What are the options? So we get that everyone's needs are different, so we have different membership tiers with varying studio hours included. It starts from £145 a month . And for the Tape Notes audience, you can double your studio time. Just use the code TAPENOTES90 when you apply in the How You Heard About Us field. Then if you release a project made at Cube within the first 90 days, we'll even gift you your Wow, that sounds like a great offer. Thanks, Nick. So if you're looking for professional studio space across London, head to thecube.com. That's the QUBE.com and don't forget to use the code tape notes ninety. T's and Cs apply . The next song we're going to look at is aftercare. Yes. Maybe we could have a blast of the master of Aftercare just so people have a an idea of what it sounds like. So I mean you explained quite a few of the different elements that were building into this, you know, your friend Ian with the cellos and Irene with her sounds and the breathing journey that you went on with John Hopkins, uh a former guest of the show. Yeah, great. But aftercare builds into a more conventional song. Yeah. No, in many ways. And it's interesting that you didn't know when you started What Have You Done to Me that you would be going on this this journey of experience, both uh a physical journey, an emotional journey that would lead you to create aftercare because you felt you you and anybody listening to this would need this kind of aftercare. And then I need lots of aftercare after making this track. Um so yeah, there was the the the key of this was initially coming out of the noise I thought it would just be a tail that would just kinda like bring you to ground and then you could play your next track or whatever. So the breathing was always something that was gonna happen. It was like coming out of the noise you know, slowing it, slowing it down in its cadence to the point where it would just fade out, essentially. But it started to get a life of its own and I came up with this little melody with with my vo ice that I kind of liked and then it ended up being a bit longer and then I chucked some cellos in there and then I Irene sent me some sounds and you know then it became a big more of a big deal and it was clear that it was going to be like a five minute thing at the end there. But I was still okay with it, but I was like something just felt a bit like wasn't special enough. It just felt like a bit of an afterthought. It didn't have any real focus to it. It just felt like I was just stretching it out for no real reason. And I was trying to avoid lyrics because I wanted actually there to be no lyrics there. I wanted whatever might have come out of the noise section for the listener to emerge unadulterated by any lyrics that I might have given. But then I started to feel like there was enough time with the breath that maybe I could suggest a kind of a thought or a type of a thought, a presence, essentially . But originally, so this kind of happened, you know, it was just like a drone basically for a long period of time. Along with some nice uh sounds from this bridge in Lisbon, it's called the Singing Bridge, that is gone through a a like resonator. So a lot of the sounds in that are this resonated bridge. It sounds amazing. Anyway, this one's mainly lyrics and sorry, mainly vocals and breathing and and ended up doing some lots of vocalization. So coming out of that, you know, that big noise section, there's this kind of like I spent a very long time deciding on how the breathing should happen, at what point it should happen. So that it felt just kind of like natural. And this was one of about a hundred iterations . Cause this just is very immediately very calm, but actually coming out of the noise section it wants to sound so eventually it was that . But this is me kind of trying to find a rhythm in it and it wasn't really working. We hear lots of drones in the background there, loads of strings , loads of cellos . All these are cellos tuned up and down, all Ian . There's also some noise in the background there that kind of comes swishing in and out. It's very low level at the moment, very filtered down. But it kind of stays in there. And then yeah, I'm going to play some of the vocals that I originally wrote or just kind of sung in and uh and a a little bit of me was just like oh that'll do that's that's fine you know that'll do it never works out never works out it can never get away with that so let's try and find some of the other vocals um Okay, long notes . Originally that melody was it's it wasn't da da da da it was No, that is it. That is the original melody, yeah. And I was sitting upstairs with my friend Daria, who ended up making the music video of this track, which took her three years. And when she heard this, she was like, oh, it's that's hide and se ek, isn't it? Slowed down. I was like, what? No, it's not. What do you mean? And then I realized that they're those melodies. Are we and then what the hell ? What yeah the hell? And I was like, oh my god, how annoying is that? I just spent absolutely loads of time making these vocals all really nice. That's not what I intended, but because it was so slow, I had no idea, but it was so amazing actually that that was what it was. Because the lyrics in hide and seek are Where Are We? What the hell is going on? And the lyrics of this song that ended up being are Here and Now Is All There Is. It's like this is the moment. Everything is about this moment. And actually, all trauma only exists in the temporal space of outside of now. So anything anxiety-driven is all in the future, everything regretful or shameful is all in the past. And so, you know, where are we? What the hell is going on? You know, all talking about the past, talking about how awful things are. I mean it was an awful thing. So when I realised that, I was very upset . But I thought, well, maybe there's something in it. So then I picked a higher melody. And then that was just R's and Ooh's originally, because I didn't want to down the lyric route. But then eventually I came I caved in and I wrote those lyri cs. But I find it quite interesting that of all the songs, yeah, I make a real statement in my songwriting to never go, even in the same tempo, same key. I'm always like very careful about it. I have a ch art. But this one I didn't because I was just like they were just long notes. Anyway, but it was great because it then then it then the song that wanted to be at the end started to unravel itself and appear as I the insecurities of me going, Oh God, I have to write more lyrics. As soon as I got rid of that and was like, oh today I'm tonight, I'm just gonna do it now. I'm just gonna do it now. And then now it came. And again it's getting closer and closer into this space I wanna be, which is, you know, I can improvise on the piano and come up with melodies and beats and all kinds of things. But lyrics has always been a bit like, oh, I need to sit and have coffee and I've got to clear the decks for a whole three days and I'm you know, there's gotta be this big ordeal. But this proved to me, as other songs have in the past, that you don't need to do that. It is there. You just have to allow it and stop overthinking things and just like just don't get disheartened by the first thing that you write. And there's something about that connection with it's like a state of I I've been doing it a bit more recently where it's like, I don't know what it is. I don't know if rappers do this, but it's like, I don't know what's about to come out. But it's gonna be okay and it's gonna be good and it's gonna find a flow and you're gonna be able to actually rhyme at the same time. Because mo loads of rappers like do this, they just invent amazing lyrics and rhymes in the moments. I'm like, it must be possible. So I was like, I'm gonna try it, you know. So I tried it there and I tried it recently with another couple of songs. So this is helping me. This, you know, I was talking about the before and after. And this for me is the beginning of the after of just kind of going, just believe in lyrics. And they were the perfect lyrics. You know, they're not they're not overthought, they're simple, they're truthful, they're exactly what I've experienced. Maybe if I'd spent more time with them, I would have overthought them and tried to make them all kind of metaphorical and whatever. But it is exactly what I needed. Should we should we hear them? Let's hear them. I'd like to play a little bit of something else. I wanted to chuck in my daughter. So I asked her on one of the evenings if she could just play some sounds, some like percussive sounds. So I just gave her some stuff. Got her to play with some bells and some shakers and some rain sticks . So all of these sounds were played by Scout. They're pitched up and down . Yeah. But they're just some nice bells that I have in the studio. So one night she did that. So for me it's really important to put Scout in here. Because she's all she's in actually all sections of the song in different ways. And then here's a bit of Irene's gorgeous kind of uh early days of the drones and stuff that she would she sent in and some other towns here . So yeah, I just kind of filtered them in and out, and that was the beginning of this much bigger attention to the drones, and I added started to add in some of my own just lower stuff . With using massive, but then they became much more massive later on. Yeah. So then that's kind of mainly this section. It's just like the the early version of this was just like drones, non lyrical hums with hide and seek melody, um and breathing. And it just you know, it wasn't the most exciting thing. But I thought I could get away with it until I obviously realised I couldn't. And then later I recognised that I needed to change the chords. Again, it was the same thing that happened in the beginning of the section of the song. I was like, no, it needs to it needs to move. And I s I was really focusing on the breath, everything was about the breath, and then I kind of went, come on, let's just remove the breath. And then the words became about breathing. And then the when I sing, breathe in, breathe in . I just hope people get sometimes might just breathe in and breathe out with me. And then the dynamic of it of like when it gets big, when things start to come in and out. And then later there was this decision, because as Darry and I, Daria is this amazing film director. Well, this is the first film that she's directed and written and edited and everything was a short film for this music video. And she got really inspired early on. Her she'd lived with me and my daughter for like three and a half years. She's a Ukrainian refugee and this was the only song that she'd ever heard me do. I mean she was a fan actually, so she was quite surprised when I ended up being her host. Um but she has seen the whole process of this and seen me lose it many times and been an amazing rock and just like inspiration. So so young, she's like only 26 now. Anyway, she heard the early versions of this song. She was the one who was like, that's hide and seek. And then we started to have discussions about the music video about what it might be. And initially it was about BDSM and power play. But over time, as I started to engage with the companies who were reaching out to me about can we create an AI voice for you? I was like, hmm, this is interesting. So there was a company reaching out to me at the time called Stable Audio. I knew a guy called Ed Newton Ricks, who was leading up this side of the project, and he was like, Can we create an AI voice for you? I said, can we do that only if we can also discuss how we can do this en masse for people, how we can programmatically or machine readable public private permissions around whether that's a thing or not? And so that was the only reason I took it on. They did a voice model of me and I was it wasn't great, but I was surprised at how much time they needed of my vocals and how much they said it would cost if I wanted to use it. So I reached out to Tristan who is amazing and assisted me for many years, about three years now, isn't it three or four years? And I said, Could you see if you could make one? And he was like, yeah sure, give it a go. So within a few hours, um, he had gener ated a voice model for me on an off-the-shelf kind of place to go and do that. And it was like, oh, this is interesting. This doesn't take weeks and it doesn't take hundreds of hours of vocals and it doesn't actually not that complicated. It's re m remarkably simple to do. That's quite scary. Even more need to have some kind of permissible layer to give to vocalists or musicians for their own playing or whatever. Anyway, so in the end, my daughter's voice actually kind of emerges out of the AI voice of me. And originally I was going to have her voice going through the AI model, but her voice is so beautiful and so just gorgeous and not putting on any fake accent or whatever, just like herself. And I love that it ends with her just a child's voice at the end there, saying something you know she says what is she oh yeah I think we need to hear a lot of this so maybe start playing the vocals um and explain what is you what is Mojan yeah. And talk us through it. it But be'd great to be able to hear it. Yeah. Tristan is going to load up the thousandth version of this track. So uh and wh while he's doing that, so the AI model of your voice is based on your capabil ities a as a singer or it's based on uh your the nuances of your So what I've done actually we're we're actually creating um what was important to me uh everything as I said is all c interconnected with everything else. So it's this is this is a track that we've actually developed technology and actually a patent around how to prove that that voice is yours. And that was done for this as well. And the idea is that Oracles can also verify that that's your voice, that um it can you can set your preferences there globally. Again, everything it needs adoption um and it needs integration, but it's just to show best practice of how artists could do it if we wanted to lead the way. So what we tested was what's the shortest amount of time that we could create a voice model out of. And so I pulled up a paragraph of I I asked well chat GPT um to generate me a paragraph of words um with uh some words that I wanted incorporating like you know peace and love and you know harmony and sustainability and all those nice things. Um and then the it would cover all of the phonons in the English language. And then I just improvised on that paragraph maybe for like ten minutes. Um probably didn't even need that long. And from that we created the voice model. So obviously the entire voice model isn't only created from those recordings. What happens with an AI is that you might have a bass model which has learned off hundreds of voices. And then your voice comes in as a weight against that. So your timbre of your voice, the gravity pulls the model into the kind of timbras of your voice. And so we did that with a few different companies, but the one that we settled on was Gen, Gen.ai, and we built our best practice with that company who don't do voice models, but we kind of showed how we could do it with the technology as well. So yeah, that is another reason for doing it was just like how can we create something that is actually really useful at the same time. So then we would take the my vocals and we'd put them through the model and then we would receive the AI vo ices back. So it's my performance, but with the timbre of my AI voice. Right. Are you able to illustrate A and B, as it were? Okay. So this is the before. Largely untimmed as well, and not the yes to all that stuff but this is the basic beginnings of me coming up with those words it's meant to sound like a painting, like a collage of voices. Okay, so this is now the AI version of what you just heard. So I'm gonna just here we go . But there's multiple different vocal tracks and the sibil ants on the voice model that we have aren't good because they have it 'cause it's a small training set, so often the sibilants phase, 'cause they're basically using a small pool. Um so I had to go through manually. Either swap them out for human S's and T's or only have one showing at one time . Yeah, so there's some of the voices. These are all of the voices. We hit all the voices together. Maybe let's do all the vocals that there are . So all of these that's all processed vocals . Sounds like there's some CPU issues So not all of these are AR voices. Because it just took forever. Yeah. It sounds like there's some weird kind of gating uh like a sidechain thing happening that's not supposed to happen because we wouldn't be jumping in and out like that. Um yes, so there's multiple, as you can see. There's even this even this drone box is consisting of like twenty tracks. Um let's just bounce down to two So on the day of the video shoot, I wanted to get the final performance of the lead voice that we were then gonna process and put kind of up in the mix um through the A R voice model because the idea is yeah get everyone in the room and that so they're all present and part of it in a way. So yeah we're gonna hear that version of me singing on the video shoot which I just recorded into my phone, which isn't great quality but it didn't matter because it's going through the model which makes it sound like it's studio recording. Yeah. Someone in the video. I can spe ak So what I've got in the background in my headphones while I record this on into the mic is a drone. And there's no actual I don't think there was any specific timing. I just wanted because I was really lost in what timing, how fast, how slow it should be, and I just thought on that day, whatever it is, that's what it's gonna be because that's just what felt good in the room. So here's the AI voice model version of that. So it sounds a lot thinner. It's kind of glassy. What can says the sibilance weirdly sometimes. And uh obviously it's got no space spatial sound. It's just like a dry studio. Yeah. So the first version sounding way nicer. Is that the point? I wanted to make it sound as human as possible. But in order to do that, I had to have many hundreds of hours kind of drawing out and trying to match the timbre . And it was just like, can I get an AI voice to pull the heartstrings? Can that happen? Which I think it does. I think you come out of that noise section and you're just so grateful to have a a voice that's just simple and saying something really beautiful. So I guess it's just I don't know what the main message is. It's just that it's just not black or white, you know, that we can have an emotional reaction to something which is AI generated. Even though it's the melody isn't AI, the performance isn't generated, you know, the performance is real, but the Tra isn't. The Tombre is still me, but it wasn't me in that moment. And anyone, potentially, even you, John , we could attach your voice Tombra onto my performance and you could hear yourself singing, you know, that melody. And that's something that we're working on now with another app is how can we make it fun for people who want to hear their voice on other people's tracks that they love to give as a gift to other people. So if you want to sing I I don don''t knowt know what's your favourite song? What's your favourite song? Who's who's special in your life who has a favourite song? Which is Girls just want to have fun. Oh, okay. Um and I don't know why. That has just come in, but out of nowhere. I think because I saw somebody talk about it earlier. So is there someone in your life you think that might might love to hear you sing that song specifically? Um my daughter. There you go. Yeah. So you know, she might find it amusing to hear you singing a Cindy Lauper song. And my my question is: like, where do we stand? Would your daughter feel cheated because you've faked a performance of singing? Or would she feel like that's so fun to hear you sing that song that I love if she does love it? And I just there's so many questions and I'm I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get hammered for it uh for doing this. But I love the idea of somebody singing one of my songs with their voice. Why not? You know, I think there's a real harm in people creating uh speeches out of people's voices or making fake tracks with people's voices and then sending them, you know, we thought our trap was Justin Bieber, but it was an AI voice or whatever it is. That's not okay. But there's fun stuff that can be done with the tools. Um we've used technology throughout our evolution and they've created incredible possibilities and fun things that we wouldn't have been able to do. Like I wouldn't have been able to make that track at all anywhere near it, even a hundred years ago. Nothing. And you know, I had we had cellos and we didn't even have recordings until, you know, just over a hundred years ago or whatever. So we have become accustomed to technology being it weaved in and out of our lives into places which are not clear anymore. But we're okay with that. And we have developed and we come up with ways to you know, , protect truth where we can. And I just think more than ever, this is a part of that. We need to be able to identify what is AI, what identify what is not, identify even the models or the ethics behind them or what's sustainable or not or what models, you know, using the most energy or whatever. All these things. We need to start building these systems. But at the moment it's yeah, there's a lot of hate around just trying stuff out and I think it's really important we need to try stuff out. We need to see where it fits with us. How do we how do we feel about having our voice on something else? Does that even matter? You know, what what's precious to us? Um so that's why I did this is because I wanted to I wanted to explore it for myself. I wanted to explore it for for oracles. I wanted to explore it for songs. Yeah. So I don't regret it. But I do think that this track has had much less reach because of the AI factor. Because also when you upload something onto a system now, DSPs, they demand if there's been AI used in the song. But you know, what bit of AI like has the whole track been generated by it? You know, what percentage of it is human driven or not? And there's just there's just no way to really police that or identify that at the moment. So it's either yes or no. And that's a lot of people's reaction to this track is like, I'm not listening to it, it's AI. It's like, well, it's clearly ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine percent not AI because I spent many thousands of hours doing it. Um but there is one element that is which is the tombra of my voice. Yeah. It's absolutely fascinating. It's an ever ongoing discussion, I think, at this point. Should we hear the track itself and hear that all together in the in the song? Yes. I would like to play you the train. Sorry, the uh the bridge. Yes, the singing bridge. This is the singing bridge. In Lisbon. Oh so the point of that is um this is using panorama again um was because in the video there's moments it goes super mono there . So I've mapped the panning But it's to to make us feel that movement that is going on. Yeah. These are some bells that are recorded in Berlin after a good night out with Irene. They're going on in the background outside of the hotel . And you can actually hear them in the mix. It's quite nice. Scouts percussion is there. Background. Oh this is the Lyra. So this one I recorded . It's this one of my most favourite machines I've ever had . This is where I started to put the cords in. Yeah, in the end I think we did come into this studio didn't we to finish it, trying to remember. So there were the nice Lyras , millions of bass tracks, I think uh Yeah. I mean in the end it sounds quite simple, the track, it just sounds quite you know, wide and lots of different layers . Yeah. But it does question for n from now on, really do I need to do that? Do I need to do that? Do I need to do that detail? Yeah. I don't think I do. But I kind of needed to make myself ill. Yeah. In order to recognise that. Right, to be able to move on. Um should we have a blast of the ending of Aftercare? Yeah. From the Master. Yes. Let's do that. Yeah, because it's got that nice base that you didn't have before. That was in the last week, just before mastering, ended up chucking in that bass line which just makes all the difference everything that you need . It was really hard to get the voices sounding nicely because they're so exposed. I all've these little colours like sounds . They're all perfectly timed with the video. It was it was interesting in the end how much the video dynamic . It's like I ended up scoring the video in the end, so all those bass loads at the end they weren't there for the longest time and all these kind of spinning sounds and these kind of like this is the sound of the light coming through the field . Everything already this thing is all that you ever need to be See a bit of E in there ? It just goes on. It's like I can never let go. I've got to give you detail right to the end. And there's a major chord at the end . Anyway. We're gonna take a quick break. We've got some more questions for you, Imogen, from our patrons on Patreon and uh a couple of questions we ask everybody who comes on take notes. So uh bear with us. Okay, no problem. We'll have a break. We've got more from Imogen on the way . This episode is being supported by Make Noise Pro Audio, the UK's go-to retailer for used studio equipment. From Neve preamps to vintage 1176s and everything in between. Microphones, compressors, consoles, drum machines, outboard units, make noise pro audio, cover it all. Alongside used gear, they also sell new products from established brands such as ATC, Solid State Logic, Franklin Audio, and many more, making it the one-stop shop for all your gear purchases. And if you need to free up space in your studio or fund your next purchase, make noise will buy or part exchange your old gear. With next day delivery and free UK shipping on the majority of products, you can get your hands on new studio essentials and toys in no time at all. And as a take notes exclusive, they're offering listeners a ten percent discount on all gear from Franklin Audio. So to find your next studio favourite, head over to MakekNoiseproAudio.com and use the code TAPENOTES ten to access your 10% discount on all Franklin Audio products . Imogen we have a couple more questions before we get out of your lovely hideaway. One is from a one of our patrons on Patreon from the Void Inclusive. Firstly, thank you for saving the Endless Platform and keeping it alive for all of us SSS heads. My question in today's hyper connected but increasingly lonely world, what can you say about the importance and future of creative community? Yeah, great question. Thank you. Yeah, I've seen the Void Inclusive many times on this app that he's talking about endless, which is great fun and, you should all go join it. Um, it's a community interactive, uh real-time jamming space. It's like it's super cool. Um yeah, I think really Tim, my friend, Tim Exile, he created Endless. I've ended up taking it on because of some stuff that happened last year. But I'm I'm very happy to be doing that. I think it's really a continuation of what he started, which is about it's not about the final product. It's about the process. That's what we do it for. It's not for the final product. You know, that's that's just the second that it's out of the studio, it's gone. Well, I'm not thinking about it. Never want to hear it again. But when in the process of the making it, that's the joy. That's the real fun, being in your creative flow. And I think the future of music and people and performance and joy is in the improvisation, is how do we help communicate and lessen the the friction between anyone making music and being able to enjoy that in as close to real time and as close to physically, as close as it can feel as well. So yeah, I mean there'll be one direction which will be hyper-commercial generated AI pop tracks, which will be created for your exact feeling and that exact emotion at that exact time, which will just feel like the best song you've ever heard ever, all the time. And then there'll be the other end of the spectrum, which is human-powered, community, real time, no lag, improvising in the moment, whether you're in the kitchen , whether you're standing in the grocery store, whether you're at home on your cello playing, you know, practicing, whatever, how do we communicate and connect these dots? So somebody was a fan of Imogen Heap and they were like going about their business, maybe they're in the car, they get a notification that says, oh, Imogen's improvising. And you're like, oh cool. So you just tune in. And maybe I've joined my friend Zoe Keating, who's like playing the cello over there in wherever she is. Um and you know, maybe I've joined this person over here in Japan who I've never improvised with, but I'm just dying to. And we're all just there in real time, and the person who's in the car is just listening to us doing it. And because the technology is so good, and because the CPUs are like as good as they are on on these big computers but now are just on your phone, or maybe they're on your glasses, you know. Um or maybe they're just you're just using your steering wheel. I don't know. Um but it's just how do we as much as possible increase that flow of community communication, lessening that gap between when there's an artist being in their flow in their inspired state and the fan listening to that. And that not sounding like you know somebody playing on a piano or whatever just, but it's just like a fully produced sound. I think we can get to that point. And I'm I'm excited about that. And that to me combats entirely the AI because AI is generated. I mean, it could be generated, I suppose, in real time, but there's nobody there. There's just this is an empty code. And maybe we attach you know feelings for AIs I'm sure we will but we will hanker for human interaction and I think that when we create those connections in real time as well as much as endless is doing, um, but you know, being able to just to just do it in the flow when you're just going running or you're playing at home or you're playing on the piano and finding those connections. I think that's gonna be the future. Just so much more human. I think that's where we're going, ironically, with AI, will enable us and empower us to be more human with each other in our time that we have. Fascinating. We ask everybody two questions on take notes. The first is there is there one piece of kit that this record couldn't be the same without? This record . So obviously ruling out my voice and things like that. I'd say the character of this has mainly come from me beginning to explore modular synthesis, like modular kit EU racks, um through my just adoration for what Irene does and you know from Flesh Licker as well, um that changed yeah the way this record moved. Yeah. Yeah. Really interesting. You have been on an amazing journey creatively on this project, on all of your projects. We ask everybody about if they have any advice for people that you might have learned along the way? Hmm. I would say I mean it's just actually just the other day on the plane. I was reading this book, can't remember what it's called. Um I just bought it at the airport and I read it super quick. And that's unlike me because I read very slowly. But the nugget of information in it is just there's two types of pain. There's like initial pain and then there's suffering. And there's a some kind of proverb out there, which I don't know the exact words of, but it's basically like a Japanese proverb or whatever. You get hit by an arrow, shot by an arrow, and that's the pain. And then the suffering is what you perceive after that. And the suffering can be short , depending on how you deal with that. Like, oh, that's really hurt. Oh, whatever. Oh, that's gonna be annoying for a week. Or you're like, oh, this is the worst thing's happening in my life ever. I'm gonna lose my job and whatever, you know, you you kind of catastrop hize not knowing at all what's going to happen. It could actually be the best thing that's happened to you. You might actually get an amazing job exactly because you've got this thing and you can't go to work and you've got this idea and it's happened to change your life. So I think for me it's the thought versus the thinking. And if I would now take some something into my next bit of my life, all the good things that have happened in my life have come from thoughts, like a quick idea, like a oh oh, I'm gonna do this thing with AI, or oh this I want to do something with noise, or oh you know, I've made this connection. And all the kind of really tiring stuff that I wish I'd never done comes largely from overthinking. And I think the thing which I need to learn to do, which I'm now going to practice doing, is to learn how to not overthink things. Because I overthought this record a lot and it made me deeply unhappy for a large portion of it. And I'm very glad it's over. But it ha it was a long lesson to kind of just go, I don't want to do that anymore. So the nugget is trust your instinct, trust your moment of aha , and don't allow the thinking , overthinking to ruin the fun. Because the minute you start, oh I can't do that because I haven't got any time and oh, I can't do that because I promise somebody, you know, all that overthinking stuff after it, or talking yourself out of something stops all the good stuff. Um so just run with your instinct, run with your intuition. Yeah. Sounds good to me. Thank you so much for letting us come into the hideaway at the roundhouse. Really exciting. Brilliant to be here. Thanks so much for your time, Imogen . Um we will get out of here now and let you go, but we should uh have one more piece of music, uh another an outro track of some kind of your creation. What should we go with? Something from the past, something more recent. What do you think? Well, we could either have I mean the most recent track that's come out is a track that I've done with the artist Patty Gonia. Yeah. Uh it's really beautiful. It was actually done in record speed. Um, because I did actually hand some of it over to somebody else to mix and just let go. Um so that's a really great track. Have you considered? I think we should play that. Yeah. It's only just came out a few weeks ago, didn't it? So let's have that. So this is have you considered so it's it's Emogene Heap, Patigonia, and Burita. Okay, excellent.