Baths / Swallows Fly Low @ Sneaky Pete's, 25 November

A Krakow native now residing in Edinburgh, Swallows Fly Low graces the stage first of all tonight, quickly proving how suitable a support act he is. Otherwise named Mikolaj Szatko, his ambient, jazzy, crackling noise textures are very much cut from the same cloth as our headliner. On this evidence, there’s a promising elegance to his output, and onlookers are suitably primed for what's to follow.

“We’re Baths,” calmly announces Will Weisenfeld, a man originally nervous to be performing as a duo. This deliberate plurality reveals what his dark pop project has become; he and collaborator Morgan Greenwood co-command Sneaky's sweatbox with an easy dynamism. Charming and confident on stage, they are a natural pair, playfully unphased by the few technical issues at the start of their set. 

Weisenfeld’s bookish appearance – vest and gym shorts, for real – belies his charismatic professionalism, and his falsetto renditions on favourites like Lovely Bloodflow and Obsidian’s No Eyes are mesmerisingly kinetic in the flesh. The effortless hopping between classically-trained piano and multiplicitous mixing makes for an engaging set, the twosome blending and detonating tracks at will (Earth Death providing particularly gutteral bass). To their credit, fervently demanded track Aminals doesn’t get aired; Baths refuses to dwell on crowdpleasers, and it’s a better night for it. [George Sully]

Read our extensive interview with Baths from earlier in the year.