Cosmo Sheldrake @ The Hug & Pint, Glasgow, 22 May

A small, plush tardigrade sits on top of Cosmo Sheldrake’s mixer. They’re teeny-tiny resilient organisms, capable of surviving in extreme environments that would be inhospitable to your average living thing. Even if this wasn’t a reference to Sheldrake’s 2015 tune Tardigrade Song, it’s the perfect kind of gift for our uber-nerd headliner, whose interests span ethnomusicology, Romantic era poetry and the natural sciences.

Launching into The Moss, sporting a knitted space jumper, the humble Sheldrake introduces uninitiated punters to his unique brand of live-looping tomfoolery. Amid a slew of increasingly identikit launchpad-toting electronic artists, this London pioneer is the Four Tet of field recordings. Not only do we get the chance to better appreciate the compositional elements of some beloved singles (he follows up with The Fly, and later we’re treated to both Pelicans We and breakout hit Rich) as he loops, samples and reconstructs in real time, he also explains the fascinating origins of his eclectic found sounds. Mongolian throat singing, mischievous ravens, a vacuum cleaner, endangeared fish (Pliocene features the sounds of many at-risk or even extinct species, a conscious conservation message) and even a cow carcass being ripped in half; his entire library is an audio document of the world, and his stories and accounts are just as entertaining as the music he makes with them.

The only downside – if it can be said to be a downside if it’s further testament to Sheldrake’s technical mastery – is that the orchestral whimsy of his debut LP The Much Much How How And I is tonight reduced to triggerable audio clips. (“I normally have a marching band for this one,” he says before Hocking, “but I’ve chopped them up and put them in my keyboard.”)

But what we lose in instrumentation, we gain in improvisation. He occasionally loops a fully vocalised ad hoc track, with nonsense lyrics composed of layered word fragments. They’re reminiscent of most beatboxers’ live-looping efforts, though his impeccable harmonising (he’s a trained vocal coach) and ear for a catchy, exotic melody stand him apart. Especially when he builds a surprising live interpretation of iconic New Orleans ditty Iko Iko ('My grandma and your grandma / Were sitting by the fire') and wins our hearts all over again.