Last night, as part of Ben Watt's string of concerts to promote his new solo album, Hendra (which was released at the end of last month, he performed in a particularly hot and sweaty Islington Assembly Hall, which is part of the London borough's Town Hall building. The 775 person capacity hall was not quite full, but this didn't seem to help on the hottest day of the year in the UK thus far, in a venue which seems to have been built long before considerations such as air conditioning were seen as a good thing.

Audience numbers were possibly swelled by the revelation last week that joining Ben on stage would be not just his band, and respected guitarist Bernard Butler, but also David Gilmour. David appears on the album, playing slide guitar on The Levels, and toward the end of Ben's set, he walked on stage to recreate this live. Dressed all in black, and lurking toward the rear of the rather dimly lit stage, he provided a fine accompaniment.

Rather than just the one song, Ben convinced David to play on three. Following on from The Levels was Young Man's Game, which sounded initially awfully like Thunderclap Newman's Something In The Air, and featured David with his signature Black Strat.

Finally, as the end of the evening approached he returned, sitting back behind his slide guitar to accompany Ben and the band on Spring, the penultimate song.

The show was the perfect showcase of Ben's talents. Word of mouth regarding his performances had resulted in some people there who'd been to other shows on the tour, back to enjoy more. As concerts go, despite the complete lack of "bells and whistles", being about as stripped back as you could get it, this was one of the best I've seen in a long while. Ben's talents as a musician, songwriter, and heartfelt singer, were clear to hear, with a very appreciative audience enthralled and enjoying every minute.

Our thanks to Teun Thönissen for supplying this picture from last night. We should have one or two additional pictures to post shortly once we've gone through what we took and edited them for clarity.

You can order the CD from Amazon UK as a standard or deluxe edition, and from Amazon.com (US), Amazon Canada, Amazon Germany, and Amazon Espana.

UPDATE: With many thanks to Peter Chow, here's an additional three pictures from the concert: