British singer-songwriter Imogen Heap has released her third solo album, Ellipse. (Sony Music Canada)

For the layperson, the creation of a pop album is an inscrutable process. Getting from point A (the spark of an idea) to point Z (a polished, neatly packaged record) can seem like alchemy. Rockumentaries and making-of DVDs have provided fans with a peek behind the curtain. But few artists have flung open the door to their studios like British songwriter Imogen Heap.

The avant-pop visionary recently completed a two-year recording cycle that included a continent-hopping writing trip (she used Google Earth to choose inspiring destinations), constructing a home studio (in her family’s heritage roundhouse in Essex) and creating strange, marvelous sounds. When Heap finally released her third full-length solo album Ellipse on Aug. 24, many supporters were waiting to greet her at the (virtual) finish line.

'Labels have been very greedy in the past, and have intentionally kept their artists very far away from the people who buy their records.'

—Imogen Heap

Heap’s fans had cause for excitement — after all, they were with her every step of the way. The web-savvy songstress shared her journey with her thriving online fan community — at press time, she had 1,016,996 followers on Twitter. While recording, she posted a steady stream of tweets and produced 40 video blogs in which she deconstructed the minutiae of making the album.

During a recent interview in Toronto, Heap says documenting the recording process came from a desire to expose what it takes to make an album.

“Most people, even my family and friends, they have no concept of what it is I do. They know I go in [to the studio], and then I come out with a song, but how that happens and how many hours it takes to put something together, what you have to go through to reduce something from many and find this one perfect thing, and what you have to go through emotionally — I guess I wanted them to understand that fully. I wanted the people who listen to my music to understand that process, too.”

At close to six feet, Heap is a statuesque figure with a shock of auburn hair and a penchant for wild, colourful outfits. She may look like a neo-gothic film character — imagined by Tim Burton, played by Helena Bonham Carter — but Heap is a grounded businesswoman who directs her career with a sure hand. Though warm and chatty, Heap also exudes a wary, almost predatory energy. She doesn’t strike you as a person who’d lay it all bare. Heap shrugs when I ask whether she ever regrets oversharing with the Twittering masses.

(Sony Music Canada) “I really am just like that. I’ll meet someone on the street and blurt out my most intimate details," she explains. "I think everybody secretly — or not so secretly — wants to be understood, and I just want to connect, you know? Twitter helps me connect to the people who help make my music, or the cycle of an album, complete. Without them experiencing the music, it doesn’t really exist, so it doesn’t make sense to not involve them.”

Heap’s embrace of social media is no surprise, since she’s always been a computer geek. As a bored boarding school student, the classically trained multi-instrumentalist sussed out how to create samples and engineer recordings by fiddling around on basic PCs. She released a solo collection of fraught piano pop called iMegaphone in 1998, but didn’t achieve significant success until she teamed up with producer Guy Sigsworth to form Frou Frou, a dreamy electronic project.

Heap’s lush, evocative work in that group helped her form relationships with film and television music supervisors. Frou Frou’s song Let Go was part of the best-selling Garden State soundtrack, and Heap’s haunting solo tune Hide and Seek could be heard in the second-season finale of The O.C. — and subsequently soared to No. 1 on the download charts.

Major labels have resisted providing too much of an artist’s work for free, fearing that offering fans pre-release tidbits might compromise later album sales. Given that it debuted at No. 4 in Canada — and at No. 5 on the Billboard Top 200 — Ellipse may prove that the reasoning is flawed.

“Labels have been very greedy in the past, and have intentionally kept their artists very far away from the people who buy their records,” she seethes. “As a result, the listener doesn’t feel connected to that person in any way — and doesn’t see the relationship between that person and how they actually live and the fact that you actually need to sell records in order to keep doing what it is you do.”

Heap does note that record sales aren’t her chief source of income; other revenue streams include licensing her music for soundtracks and collaborations with artists like Mika and Jason DeRulo.

Doubters might wonder whether Heap compromised her muse by granting fans such access to the creation process. She insists fan feedback allowed her to “make bolder decisions and feel more confident in [her] convictions.” That might include Ellipse songs like Bad Body Double, a cheeky cacophony of bloops and bleeps inspired by a bout of self-loathing while in Japan, or Aha!, a synth-driven squiggle of a song that skewers the hypocrisy of suburban snobs.

Heap straps on a synth during a performance in London, England in 2006. (Jim Dyson/Getty Images) “After the last record [2005’s Speak for Yourself], I was fed up with myself for just writing alternatives on a theme,” Heap says. “Basically, just me being in relationships and the variables of that. You know, I only have so many songs that I’ll write in a lifetime. Do I really want to write about me and my lover, or me wanting to be with somebody else or me, me, me, me .…?”

She laughs. “I feel like I’ve grown up a bit. I’m a bit more confident, and I’ve been reading more, and I’ve had a little more time to myself. I went on this writing trip to gather my thoughts about where and who I am in this world, and why we’re all here. And because of these global-social new ways, you feel a lot more like you’re involved in everyday things which matter to others.”

In the past, Heap would start posting blog entries midway through the recording process, but the instant gratification of Twitter provided a therapeutic lifeline.

“If you’re feeling down, which I am quite a lot when I’m in the studio — like I can’t do it, and I’m rubbish, and I should get some help and stop being so pigheaded — [it’s invaluable] to receive a message that says, ‘I love what you did last night! I can’t wait to hear the record.’ Or to wake up in the morning and read, ‘This song got me and my boyfriend together’. One little thing, one connection that lets you know somebody’s gotten something from what you’ve made, that really helps. And that gets me back into the studio.”

Ellipse is in stores now.

Sarah Liss writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.