Phildel used her sur­round­ings of St Pan­cras Old Church to cre­ate a mixed media expe­ri­ence, instead of sim­ply per­form­ing her songs – this was an inspired move.

This tiny church has a rich his­to­ry and amongst those buried in its church­yard are a vam­pire writer, a com­pos­er and a sculp­tor. It clings to the edge of the glitzy new St Pan­cras Sta­tion, where Eurostar trains glide into Lon­don and cool bars are replac­ing the arch­es and alley­ways of old King’s Cross.

Most of the audi­ence are seat­ed ear­ly as dusk falls in the church, moody music and an abun­dance of dry ice rack up the goth­ic quo­ta. As start­ing time draws near, heads crane round to the church entrance and I won­der if a fash­ion­ably late Satan­ic bride will appear.

Three masked fig­ures appear and walk in slow pro­ces­sion up the aisle, car­ry­ing can­dles, before per­form­ing a free-flow­ing dance – these fig­ures like white witch­es are clad in flu­id, sculp­tur­al dressed by Phildel’s favourite design­er Hen­ri­et­ta Ludgate.

Next to appear are Phildel’s band for the evening: Chris Young on synth, Oliv­er Lowe on drums, Enri­ca De Cesare on vocals, Luca Koc­s­marszky on vio­lin and vocals and Bry­ony James, cel­lo and vocals. And, as the open­ing notes of The Dis­ap­pear­ance of the Girl com­mence, Phildel makes her entrance, a dra­mat­ic fig­ure in a black dress, barefoot.

This is def­i­nite­ly a ‘Ladies Night’. The three female musi­cians echo the dancers in their white dress­es and chalky faces, act­ing as a foil for Phildel’s dark and dra­mat­ic stage per­sona. Chris’s face is whit­ed out, but it’s the females on stage who are the focus.

The sec­ond num­ber is Storm Song. What­ev­er prob­lems there had been with the sound dur­ing rehearsals were cer­tain­ly ironed out as the sound was well bal­anced. Usu­al­ly, when I see a band live, there’s that moment of minor adjust­ment, as the live, raw voice takes over from the tweaked one I’ve got used to from the record­ed ver­sion. With Phildel this does­n’t hap­pen: her nat­ur­al voice is of the same strength and clar­i­ty as on her CD, and there’s a warmth that is more pro­nounced on hear­ing her live.

I par­tic­u­lar­ly like The Wolf with its puls­ing beat, and Dare, not pre­vi­ous­ly a song that has stood out for me. In keep­ing with the the­atri­cal mood, Phildel does­n’t talk much between num­bers, but as the evening pro­gress­es she appears more relaxed and has a bit of a ban­ter with us. She ends with Switch­blade and there’s a tan­ta­lis­ing moment where it looks like we’re going to get one more song, but sad­ly it’s not to be and the evening draws to a close.

The Dis­ap­pear­ance of the Girl, St Pan­cras Old Church

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