The life of Phildel has been anything but ordinary, and she uses the power of her personal experiences to create extraordinary music.
As a child, Phildel found herself entrapped in a religious household void of power and deprived of music. Wordsworth put it best: “We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.” She left home at the age of seventeen to rebuild her personal identity and to develop the musical visions that had been manifesting in her imagination. The result of those visions can be heard in her debut album, The Disappearance of The Girl, with the title alluding to her past.
Following a stellar performance in Vancouver last week at CBC Studio 700, I had the opportunity to talk to Phildel about the effect that music has had on her, the most rewarding process in making her debut, and the message of her music.
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asapmusicblog.ca: To get to know you a little better, I know that you graduated with a degree in English Literature. I was wondering what your favourite course was during your time in university?
Phildel: It was poetry – a general, basic course. In that we studied so much different stuff, from Wordsworth’s The Prelude to T.S. Eliot. Actually, Wordsworth… The Prelude really defined a lot of my artistic vision in many ways, It’s sort of about the landscape and the sublime of the landscape, and the feeling like you can almost go on a spiritual journey within yourself by traveling through the landscape and connecting with nature, and it was something that I found really resonated with me later in my life. But yes, so I’m really close to nature now, and that’s partly why The Glass Ghost is kind of winter-inspired.
A: You grew up in a household void of music, as a form of oppression in the hands of your stepfather. When you finally had access to all of this music you were deprived of, what aspects of it did you connect with the most?
P: I’d say the power of it, and I think because I came from a very… I don’t know if disempowered is even a word, but I came from a place of real vulnerability. The first thing that I loved about music was the power behind dance music and really powerful music, I suppose, that whips you up and gives you this energy and that’s quite euphoric – those are all the things that I loved first off about the music that I was getting into. I think I still kind of have that a bit, like my angriest songs are all dance-y songs that really kind of energetic.
A: There are definite autobiographical aspects in your songs. Do you find any difficulty in developing your personal experiences into your lyrics?
P: You know, I don’t, and I have a really natural creative process for that which basically means that I don’t try to consciously think about what I’m going to write about. I just sit at the piano and I kind of connect with what I’m playing, and I just let any lyrics come to me, abstract as they are, doesn’t matter. Often what will happen is that they don’t make sense to me at the time, but then months later looking back, they make total sense in terms of what I was going through at that point so I feel as though it’s almost a kind of channel into the subconscious when you work in that way.
A: The Disappearance of The Girl was album that was almost ten years in the making, in that you wanted to develop in different areas as a musician. In retrospect, what was the most rewarding part of the process?
P: Oh, wow, that’s a really good question. I think the self-confidence it gave me to know that I could create something I felt that proud of – there’s nothing like that feeling. I drew so much identity and so much power and self-confidence from creating that album, and having this musical world where I could escape to and be powerful and say things like, “I’m going to come and get you”. When I came from a reality where I was very much the victim all the time, being able to become that person through music just kind of gave me more and more of the confidence to become a stronger person in real life.
A: Imagination is a big part of who you are and in your music, and it manifests into your music videos. Do you ever find difficulty in capturing your vision into the visual media?
P: The only thing that kind of holds me back, I suppose, is the resource issue. We don’t have tons of money to make a great music video. In fact, with ‘The Disappearance of The Girl’, my label Decca Records didn’t give me any budget to create the music video so I had to take £300 out of my own pocket and create them all by myself. With an endless budget, I would probably execute things very differently, but as it was… I did my best following quite a firm vision that I had. I’m quite good at composing the shots in my imagination, and making them real quite easily – I didn’t find it hugely difficult to work with what I had.
A: In Canada, we have a bit more of resources and artists can submit for grants and stuff like that, but I guess in the UK it’s a little bit different?
P: It’s totally different! I’ve really noticed that since being here. The acts that I’ve played alongside are so much better equipped – they have really nice equipment, and we’ve been wrapping our synth case in bubble wrap and a towel for like five years. There’s just nowhere in the UK… it’s so hard to get funding, it’s pretty much impossible really. But saying that, BPI have just put out a new grant funding thing for touring artists coming out of the UK to tour abroad, and that was only announced a couple of weeks ago so we have applied for that. It’s going to be so competitive, because there’s not much funding around.
A: Hopefully that changes!
P: Considering how much the UK puts out musically, and successfully, I think it’s a shame there isn’t more support for artists.
A: Tonight is the last date of your North American tour. What have been some of the most memorable moments for you on tour?
P: We’ve had so many, it’s been really funny and I’m going to create a tour diary, I think. I’d say that the incident on the airplane with the drunk man who got on, and the wrong passenger was interrogated for ages and was so confused – that was funny. I really enjoyed playing the Austin, Texas show. We had people who had driven for six hours to get to the show, and they were just so enthused and a really amazing audience.
And then San Francisco, I played with Peter S. Beagle who is the author of The Last Unicorn, which is a fantasy classic. Him and I collaborated, so he wrote the lyrics and I wrote the music for a piece called “Dark Water Down”, and we premiered it together at the San Francisco show at Café du Nord. That was such a highlight of my life because as a child I had seen The Last Unicorn and read the story and it really kind of defined me as a very imaginative child.
Obviously tonight, the last night of the tour, it was just incredible when everyone stood up at the end I just really teared up. So touching, and I’m just so glad I could end the tour on such a great, great night. So yeah, those are the highlights!
A: If you could narrow down a single message that you would want your music to convey, what would that message be?
P: Be brave, and do what you need to do with your life. I don’t know, it’s my example I suppose; it’s the example I set. I think so commonly I see so many people in life that are surrounded by destructive people who are trying to enforce too much control over others, and that’s so unfair. I think you’ve got to break free, be liberated, create what you want to create, and don’t care about what anybody says – just do it.
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For more information on Phildel and her music, head over to: http://phildel.com.
