Ellipse (album)


Ellipse is the third studio album from British singer-songwriter Imogen Heap. After returning from a round the world writing trip, Heap completed the album at her childhood home in Essex, converting her old playroom in the basement into a studio. The album got its name from the distinctive elliptical shape of the house.
The album's title was confirmed by Heap via her Twitter page on 25 April 2009, after being leaked onto the internet on 23 April. On 15 June, Heap confirmed that the album would be released on 24 August 2009 in the United Kingdom on Megaphonic Records and 25 August in the United States/Canada on RCA Victor Records. International release date was also 24 August.
Subject matter in the songs includes post break-up malaise, domestic boredom, body image issues and a common Heap theme, unrequited love. On 17 August 2009 Heap made the album available for live streaming via her webpage. The album can no longer be streamed via her webpage but was moved to SoundCloud.

Background

In July 2009, a promotional copy of the album appeared on eBay; Heap in return placed a bid of £10,000,000 to try to reclaim the album, which eBay rejected. As of 8 July, eBay had ended the auction. On 14 July, the first single "First Train Home" was released, and a digital pre-order for the album became available on iTunes in two versions.
The deluxe version includes instrumental tracks of the entire album. Both standard and deluxe editions feature a "Behind the scenes" video when pre-ordered. As the song "The Fire" is already an instrumental, the "instrumental" version on the Deluxe edition's second disc consists of just the crackling fire in the background of the song proper. The solo piano track, without the fire sounds, was included only on the Deluxe CD copy of the album, as a hidden track at the end of "Half Life"; digital copies omit this hidden track.

Critical reception

Critical response to Ellipse was generally positive. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 68, based on 12 reviews. It also earned her a further two Grammy Nominations on 2 December for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for "The Fire" and Best Engineered Non-Classical Album. On 31 January 2010, it was announced that Heap had won the latter award.

Commercial performance

As of 2011, the album had sold 161,000 copies in United States.

Live performances

In October 2008, Heap travelled to America to perform at Pop!Tech in Camden, Maine. She performed the song 'Wait It Out' live, for the first time ever on 24 October. The performance was recorded and released on Youtube.com the following day.
On 24 August 2009, Heap appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman and performed "First Train Home". On her Twitter page, Imogen admitted that she messed up on the second line of the second verse during the performance.
The following day, on 25 August, Imogen headed to the WNYC Radio Station in New York to play "First Train Home" and "Half Life" on air and give a short interview.

Track listing

On 8 June, Heap confirmed the following as the album's official and final track listing:

Personnel

Release history