First Train Home - Official Video

What this video is

Released in mid-2009, 'First Train Home' arrived at a pivotal moment in Imogen Heap's career and in the broader music landscape. Ellipse, her third solo album, was documented in real time via 40 YouTube video blogs, making Heap one of the earliest major artists to use social media and vlogging as a creative and promotional tool — an approach that cultivated a deeply engaged online fanbase. The song itself was…

Why it matters

As the sole single from Ellipse, this video represents the apex of late-2000s British art-pop video practice: a composer-producer who controlled every aspect of her album's creation submitting to a rare external directorial vision from one of Britain's foremost stage designers. The collaboration…

The director

Esmeralda Devlin CBE RDI (born 24 September 1971, Kingston upon Thames) is an English artist and stage designer known for creating large-scale performative sculptures and environments fusing music, language and light. She trained at Bristol University (BA…