Laura Cannell @ Everyman Bistro, 21 January

With 2014 debut album Quick Sparrows Over The Black Earth, Laura Cannell announced herself as an incredibly unique and startling interpreter of music which not only harked back to Britain’s folk traditions but seemed to revive something far more primitive and earthy.

This was music that seemed to emerge from the primeval bogs of the artist’s native East Anglia and, while Cannell is careful to not be overly reverential, it’s almost a shock to watch her play these stunning compositions in a venue that provides such modern innovations as electricity, toilets and draught lager rather than mead.

Performing alone on a dimly lit stage, Cannell uses just fiddle and two recorders to evoke the medieval as she begins tonight’s set with the first two tracks from her second album, Beneath Swooping Talons. All the Land Ablaze features a frankly frightening stop-start refrain while For Sorrow Salt Tears sees Cannell adopt her self-developed technique of ‘deconstructed bow’, which adds a layer of droning dissonance to proceedings both melancholic and unsettling.

On the startling Deers Bark, Cannell’s double recorder technique, in which she simultaneously blows two of the instruments, comes to the fore as she builds up a primitive, almost animalistic, layer of sound that belies the childlike reputation of the instrument.

Interspersing her songs with tales of black dogs, 12th-century nuns and 5th-century repentance, Cannell is a charming and reassuring guide through this murky world. When she strides into the crowd to play set closer The Drowned Sacriston, the effect is almost as dramatic and haunting as the music itself.