Colin Stetson @ Gorilla, Manchester, 14 Jul

Colin Stetson has been around the houses. Some may remember him as an integral part of the Arcade Fire touring line-up circa Neon Bible, and he’s also worked with the likes of Bon Iver, Laurie Anderson and David Byrne, not to mention his own wife, Arcade Fire’s touring violinist Sarah Neufeld. In between he’s found time to produce several records and score films.

Preceded by a choice and eclectic mix from Dark Matter curator BBC 6 Music DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, Stetson is on his own tonight in a city he can’t remember last visiting, something with which he appears a little uncomfortable but he interacts amusingly with the audience nonetheless.

The evening's backdrop is a huge disc which fluctuates from pale moon to throbbing red. Opening with Spindrift from 2017's All This I Do for Glory, his silhouette against the backdrop immediately exposes his mastery of the circular breathing technique (in through nose, out through puffed cheeks at the same time) which allows him to create astonishing sounds. His lumberjack physique, pulsating forehead veins and breathtaking ability (no pun intended) to sustain a consistent sound for 10 minutes or longer prompts you to wonder if he has muscles in his lungs, too.

Drawing largely on ...Glory and some unreleased tracks, Stetson's set is essentially ambient drone, but not of the traditional electronic kind. Extensively mic’d up as usual, across his various saxophones and other instruments, and even his body, it’s hard to believe that what you hear is emanating from one person and those instruments.

Never has a phrase like ‘one man orchestra’ been so apt. Stetson's sounds are uniformly unearthly, evoking images of elephants trumpeting and even rhinoceros mating calls.

As another audience member falls victim to the heat in Gorilla, you wonder how long Stetson can maintain the pace and he admits that final song Strike Your Forge and Grin is going to “take him out of the game.” What follows is the equivalent of running a marathon in 15 minutes while solving a taxing IQ puzzle, such is the physical and mental effort required to play the piece, which climaxes magnificently. Incredibly, he’s still standing.

No encore is required, even if he had it in him, nor would one be demanded. Stetson's wonderful masterclass is over, leaving us all breathless.