This is the official music video for Imogen Heap‘s Me The Machine, which was written with and for her Mi.Mu MIDI glove controllers.
“Most of the visuals are being manipulated live using my Mi.Mu gloves,” notes Heap, “as I didn’t just want to mime. So, I went one step further and worked with the team on getting the gloves ready for visual manipulations.”
Heap is currently leading Kickstarter project to put the Mi.Mu glove controllers into production. Me The Machine is from her upcoming album, Sparks.
via Imogen Heap
Reminds me of the midi gloves used by Steve Hogarth during Season’s End tour in the early 90s. The reason involded for using them was almost the same: to enhance the visual performance of someone using a keyboard without relying on Rick Wakeman’s capes…
Love it! Imogene Heap is the ultimate woman, also!
Heap continues to combine diverse skills like sound-design, song-writing, composition, great vocals, strong keyboard playing, and now high-tech garments. At home with a clunky piano, a giant kalimba, a creaky something she found in her house; she always breaths life into her mixes. Also, she is not only comfortable with modern tools, but seeks to take them to high levels of integration with her craft/art.
On first listen this song seems to be playing around with the humans getting either lost or enmeshed with the machines & concepts around tech. It’s a little dark to me.
It’s a bit cheesy to me. All of it. The lyrics. The flashing lights. It’s almost like satire or a spoof?
Wow, NO NO NO That’s kitsch. That’s like 80’s, but even worse. The lyrics are almost disgusting, it’s obviously trying to be nerdy, but is sooo pretentious.
As much I love some of her previous work and I still enjoy voice, melodies, charmonies, I can no more comprehend her semantically nor visually.
Agree, that’s a better word for it.
To me it’s like, “Yeah Cyber-punk!” “Mondo 2000!” Except written by a first grader. Seriously. Ok maybe 3rd or 4th.
I take it she didn’t read any of the cyberpunk stuff in the mid-80s, which all explored this theme in much more interesting ways.
She’s an excellent musician, music composer, singer and technician. However, I agree with the previous poster that most of her lyrics are embarrassingly pretentious. Unfortunately, she is not alone…by a long shot. Good lyricists are extemely rare, and that is obvious by the trash that is being written today.
hmm, undecided about this, she clearly has talent and is trying to do something different but this is really awful.
You went from undecided to decided in one sentence. 😀
“The PIN code to happiness. Access denied. Switching to manual. Switching to manualllllllll…”
uhhh… what?
Wow, and it’s actually a good song to boot!
Shouldn’t it be “I The Machine?”
Either way it’s sad. I don’t see why glamorizing the decline of the human race is exciting, unless you have nothing else to say, or want to exploit it to sell gloves.
If you base your grammar on Will Smith movies.
You gotta look at it in context. Her new album documents the process of writing itself within the lyrics. It’s very self aware and in general, and I agree, self reflexive art can definitely can come across as cheesy. I think “simple” and “literal” is a more accurate description than “pretentious”, and to make it into some kind of trend of “oh god is this the way things are going ” is a mistake. Imogen isn’t one to follow trends.
I’m on the fence, personally. I’ve been following Imogen for a long time and have a lot of respect for her work. Take it as the companion piece to building the gloves. The gloves are amazing, BTW. Look them up on Youtube.
I’m still trying to be a better lyric writer. I should use that excuse or go for the emperors clothes angle….smart.
Thanks, Nowell. That was nicely written & thoughtful.
(vomits into mouth a little bit) …this is a vanity project. Flashy technology for the sake of making yourself look important when actually all it serves to do is mask the fundamental lack of ideas in the composition. Bad pop music with flashy lights and the pretence of media-art. It’s like something that was cut from an episode of Nathan Barley and should be held up as an example of how NOT to do thing.
You guys need to seriously lighten up. 🙂
Let’s just agree:
1. Imogen Heap sounds great;
2. Imogen Heap looks great;
3. Imogen Heap is generally interesting to her audience (including nerds);
4. Imogen Heap has made some great songs;
5. This isn’t one of them.