IMOGEN

DIGGING DEEPER IMOGEN

WORLD BUILDING

Geordie singer/songwriter and artist IMOGEN emerges with a new immersive and beguiling body of work: Bloodbag EP. Here she tells us the importance of world building in communicating her vision

The Bloodbag EP is a collection of songs that explores what it is to lose control, how much you start out with anyway, and what it means to claim it back. It’s something I’ve been writing about for a long time so it felt powerful to me to put 4 songs written at different points in my life together, coming at the subject from 4 different angles, ages and scenarios. The title track Bloodbag explores surgical recovery, Lioncub the loss of innocence, Sleeptight the societal treatment of women’s bodies, and Every Five Minutes a longing to reconnect with oneself.

I’ve always written to process and understand my feelings. I come from a long line of storytellers (the Geordies do it so well) so I grew up understanding the importance of singing and storytelling for connection, for making sense of the world around us. But with live performance and audience interaction on pause, I began focusing on new ways of communicating the work I hadn’t quite approached before. Through building a visual world around this EP, these four songs were able to take on a multi-layered life of their own, imbued with new meaning, feeling and colour.

I was nervous initially inviting visual collaboration to something that began as so intimate and personal. I feared that intentions would be lost, or they wouldn’t translate. But welcoming dialogue around this work was the best thing I could have done. Sometimes other’s ideas chimed with my own, sometimes they were surprisingly different and magic happened. I think every songwriter has to let go at some point, in order to expand. Feelings are ephemeral. Interpretation is subjective. Meaning morphs. As each artwork and video was discussed and built, each track took a new path, and continues to do so each time someone listens and watches. It’s wild for me to stand back and see what this EP has become and the community that has evolved around its creation.

A lot was exorcised creating the Bloodbag EP universe. I want people to feel immersed and invited in, to interpret it as their own and to hopefully find the same catharsis and empowerment I have throughout this process of bringing it to life. I’m very excited to watch it grow and shape and now, fingers crossed, incredibly excited to perform it live.

Huge thank you to my fellow world-builders: Harv Frost, all at Nova Productions, Katie Scott, Ruth Kilpatrick, Chris McCourt, PRS Foundation and ACE. Sleeptight is out September 30.

The Bloodbag EP by IMOGEN comes out October 28th via sevenfoursevensix.