Martina, like her long-time collaborator Tricky, operates at a languorous crawl. Nothing, it seems, can ruffle her sufficiently to make either artist or music stand to attention. Once she eventually shuffles onstage tonight she brings a calm, frozen time space to the filthy chaos of King's Cross. When you've managed to bring your own tempo down to hers, its sublime still exerts a narcotic pull.
The pace is defined by the four long years that it took Martina to complete her debut album, 'Quixotic', a collection of drifting, ethereal soul and swampy blues that haunts as much as it transfixes. It's a hard album to make a commitment to - one that makes no outward bid for your attention but reveals something quietly spectacular to those than can be bothered to look beyond the surface.
Dressed in 50s purple silk dress and looking every inch the angelic devil of a New Orleans back street evoked by so many of her songs, Martina holds her crowd with insouciant ease. Her band are the servants of their mistress, the one exception a sharp-suited and trilby-hatted harmonica player who shares the front of the stage along with gospel backing singers. He, you're invited to imagine, is the devil that holds the chanteuse in his whispering grip.
Muttering between blasts on the harp he provides the only accompaniment for Martina's opening song, a 'spiritual' filtered back through black history via ancient microphone technology. She returns to the same mic later for the stifling bluesy lament of 'Lullaby' that could have been written as a soundtrack to Toni Morrison's darkly spiritual novel of slavery, 'Beloved'. 'Soul Food', one of 'Quixotic's few truly pop moments, is a soaring torch song wrapped in lush string-arrangements by David Arnold and elevated way beyond comparisons with Macy Gray by its effortless connection to the past.
Josh Homme and Mark Lanegan collaboration, 'Need One', a little too contrived on record, makes sense live and only 'I Wanna Be There' really suffers in translation. Even the lurching rhythmic mantras compiled by Tricky are brought to heel on the Scala stage. Inevitably, it leaves you longing for a reunion to rescue the Westcountry dervish from his own spiral of withdrawn, unspectacular live outings.
Her recent Mercury nomination may or may not help Martina Topley-Bird sell enough of her long-gestated album to be in with a chance of making another. But tonight confirms that the quiet outsider could realistically be at the head of the list when the judges give their verdict and at 12-1 that's got to be worth a flutter.
