things you should download off iTunes today

It's probably very much the outside scoop to those who are aficionados of The O.C., but I heard Imogen Heap's Hide And Seek on Jo Whiley's Radio 1 show the other day, and it's really very good indeed. The vocoder seems to have made a bit of a comeback in recent years, starting with the fairly unremarkable use of it in Cher's enormo-hit Believe a while back, but this seems a genuinely innovative bit of music. Here's a live version which is quite close to the original, and here's a slightly sparser one apparently filmed at a rehearsal for a radio show of some sort.

She's a slightly strange equine beauty as well; reminds me of Ronni Ancona a bit. She also has a blog, including regular video updates, which reveal her to be slightly posh and scatty if not (in the latest one at least) revealing much about the creative or recording process, though there's some good stuff about plastering and what she cooked for lunch, if that's what you're after.

I don't want to go down the heard-it-all-before route, while stroking my beard and sucking ruminatively on my pipe-stem, but Hide And Seek is not dissimilar to Shadows And Light from Joni Mitchell's seminal 1975 album The Hissing Of Summer Lawns. That song is also available for download from iTunes. One more thing: The Hissing Of Summer Lawns is the Joni Mitchell album most popular with the jazz-heads and the rock critics, but 1972's Blue is The One. Just thought I'd let you know.