A Hawk And A Hacksaw @ The Arches, 13 May

Having done his own sound-checking, Ben Wetherill catches us all off guard when the lights fade and he starts his fragile and beautiful set of folk laments. The intimacy of his delicate and intricate songs has the crowd gripped, with the spell broken only briefly by an ill-timed fire alarm.

A Hawk And A Hacksaw take to the stage to rapturous applause, and they waste little time in transforming this subterranean venue into an eastern European knees-up. Jeremy Barnes anchors the show - playing accordion and drums simultaneously - while Heather Trost is a virtuoso on the violin. At times their pace is so frenetic that they barely seem able to keep up with themselves as they rocket through The Sparrow and Fernando’s Giampari. Barnes is a phenomenon to behold on the accordion, largely because he can’t possibly see what his dancing fingers are doing as they scale the keys time and again. Their performance is mesmerising, and the Arches crowd soak it up. “The next song is, well, the one we’re going to play,” a carefree Barnes offers before they descend into another glorious soaring cacophony of gypsy folk. Nicely orchestrated chaos.