Wednesday 29 May 2013

Music - Part 86 - An Interview With Phildel





The debut album from Phildel, The Disappearance Of The Girl, is about to be launched to the World.  A fine example of alternative pop, with incisive lyrics and a beautiful voice.

Phildel took time out from her busy schedule to let me ask a few quesitons:



Do I call you Phildel or Zara?
Definitely Phildel

How’s your day been?
So far - short, I’ve just woken up as were out until 2am last night recording nighttime sounds in a field.

The Disappearance Of The Girl is a superb album, are you ready for the inevitable attention that will come your way?
Thank you - yes, I think so, I spent years working on the album so it’s lovely to be bringing it to the surface now.



Will fame affect you?
I doubt it...I live in my own little world to such an extent that reality doesn’t tend to have much impact.

What inspires your lyrics? 
It all finds it root in how I’m feeling, but mainly the subconscious or the ‘dreaming mind’ - a part of my brain that I’m not really consciously engaged with....I just let the lyric fragments unfold without coming up with a formula or topic - sometimes the words don’t make sense at first. But when I look at them after some time’s past - they make perfect sense in terms of what I was going through. I think our awareness as humans is funny like that. You don’t often realise the full extent of what you’re going through until you back on it years later. But the subconscious or dreaming part of your mind, is always more connected to how you feel.


When did you realise you had such a beautiful voice?  Do you hear it yourself?
I’ve never really thought of it as beautiful, I suppose I just try to make sure it expresses what I want to express. In fact, out of all the musical things I do - composing, arranging, playing instruments -my voice is the one thing I’m most insecure about. Because I couldn’t really use my voice for so many years living in my mother and stepfather’s house - and when I first started to sing - I could barely make a sound. It felt incredibly difficult and somehow, it still feels like a challenge to make a sound - after all the years of being told to be silent. I suppose it’s all quite psychological.

Who were your musical influences, and, how much did you crave them when music was banned from your household?
I was very young before music was banned from my household - only 8 years old. So I hadn’t really formed any musical influences. I loved the nursery rhymes I knew and I’d teach myself to play them all on my toy piano. I remember it clearly - it was one of my only real joys as a child. Learning to play the nursery rhymes by ear felt like solving a brilliant puzzle of sound. I never understood why nobody else in my family wanted to do it.

How big a part was the musical silence when writing such haunting songs?
I think the experiences and trauma of the ten years I spent in that household, not just without music, but without any freedom at all - the sweeping changes to my cultural identity, what felt like imprisonment for a decade - are absolutely central to the songs on the album. In the safe haven of my album world - the world of my own imagination - I was able to confront all of those issues and say things I couldn’t ever say in reality.

Twitter or Facebook?
Both...but I think Facebook allows me to share art and music easier and allows others to discuss things with me easier.

You’ve made a video for every track on your album.  What’s the thought process behind that?
I wanted the videos to show the album’s visual journey I have in my mind. One video however, “Holes In Your Coffin” I’ve asked the public to contribute footage for. I wanted to give my supporters the chance to get really involved. It’s gone so well and the submissions have been excellent. My label didn’t give any budget for the videos - so I shot and directed them myself using £300 I had to spare. It took me about seven months to complete them all. I think with art and music if you have a vision, you just need to get on with it and find a way. No matter whether there’s outside help or not. Just bring it into existence, no matter what it takes.



Do you listen to your own music?
Yes, I have to re-draft and spend a long time sculpting the arrangements when I work on music so I listen to the tracks quite intensively for the few years that I spend working on them. Once the album is finalised I stop listening for a few years and move on to writing the next songs...

You’re very complimentary of producer Ross Cullum, and, partner Chris on the album notes.  The perfect team?
Yes - along with the engineers, programmers and musicians who also worked on the album. I was so lucky to have had such an excellent team for “The Disappearance of the Girl”. Ross Cullum is such an intuitive and supportive producer - he completely supported my vision and the process was entirely free and without any creative restriction. Ross said he felt that for him, the role of a producer is to support a great artist and the strongest album emerges from an undiluted artist’s vision. Many producers I’ve worked with have imposed their own vision and ideas. For me - that approach never worked out, as I have a detailed vision for what I need an album I create to sound like. Chris Young - my long-standing (long-suffering!) partner supports me in everything I do musically. He’s amazing, I don’t think I’d have the confidence I have without him. In the years gone by, I’d come home and say...”Oh, this person thinks I should do this...and I don’t know, maybe they’re right...” And he’d just sit me down and say - “Yesterday, you told me that for this track you saw choirs of ethereal spirits and ruins in a countryside valley” - you know exactly what you think this should be - and everytime you work with someone who thinks they know better - it never works out. You need to believe in yourself”. He was always right and I’m so glad I held out for a producer like Ross Cullum and programmers like Sean McGhee and Marky Bates who really got into the mindset and built on my album vision to create an album that surpassed my own expectations and that I am so proud of.

Have you ever wanted to scream halfway through a performance?
Haha! No.

I don’t watch many TV adverts, but I believe several of your songs have been ‘borrowed’.  Would you turn down any offers if you didn’t like their product?
Yes, I’d turn things down if I just didn’t like the way the advert looked or if it advertised a product I didn’t personally think much of. I’ve always been a customer of the things my music’s been used on. As a musician of my particular kind of music, I have a positive perspective on advertising - because in the music industry today, radio stations don’t often give airplay to music that’s not genre-specific or hard to categorise...it’s actually advertising people who are most likely to give that kind of sound a major platform. I think they’re more creative and courageous in the way they work with music.

I’m coming over for a meal, what are we having?
My darker side immediately gets a bit Silence of the Lambs and says ‘you’. But my more balanced conscious mind suggests salmon teryaki, pak choi and rice noodles - my favourite dish at the moment.

Beneath the calm of your music are some quite incisive lyrics, how intentional is that?
The contrast isn’t intentional at all...we just tried to find the best sounds to serve the spirit of the song. And the cards fell as they fell.

What are your plans for the rest of the year?  Maybe a holiday?

No chance of a holiday as such...I’m playing live dates around the UK later this month, including the Bristol and Manchester legs of Dot-to-Dot Festival, followed by Hay-on-the-Wye “How The Light Gets In” Festival. Then I’ll be off to the USA in July for a month of collaborations with a brilliant US artist called SLEEPTHIEF. Followed by a trip to Vancouver to work with the wonderful Bill Leeb of Delirium, then a performance at Vancouver Folk Festival. And straight back to the UK in time to play the Secret Garden Party, which I’m so looking forward to. I’ll also be playing Edinburgh Fringe Festival on 5th August, which will be fun!


I would like to issue a huge thank you to Chris Stone of Stone Immaculate for arranging the interview, and, to Phildel for her time and generosity.




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