Jane Weaver
Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, September 14

WITH his Tae Sup Wi’ A Fifer nights, James Yorkston regularly makes Kirkcaldy a cultural hotspot to match anything in the central belt.

Rather than flashy production values or how many edgy hipsters it attracts, its chief strength is the unusual line-ups the Cellardyke multi-instrumentalist puts together.

Though predominantly a music night, editions often feature writers, poets – even comedians.

It always makes sense, as if Yorkston can see links between the artists less perceptible to mere mortals. No matter the form or genre, what unites them all is self-belief, a commitment to shaping their own path.

Though Yorkston is yet to score a dud, this Saturday's Tae Sup is especially alluring, teaming novelist Ian Rankin with Callum Easter, a young musician from Edinburgh making otherworldly soul.

Headlining is Jane Weaver, a Liverpool-born musical polymath whose career began as the sixth-form frontwoman of Britpop band Kill Laura in the 1990s.

She's since journeyed into folk with her band Misty Dixon and to rock's outer reaches as a prolific solo artist.

Though taking influences from the relatively obscure realms of library music, early electronica and strange psychedelia, Weaver's songwriting and rich vocals make for a compelling, accessible listen, particularly on recent studio albums The Silver Globe (2014) and 2017's Modern Kosmology.

The latter is a spell-binding modern classic, featuring astonishing career-high The Architect and guest vocals from Malcolm Mooney of obvious Weaver favourites Can.

This one-off Scottish date will see her play from June's Loops In The Secret Society, an album which saw her work with long-term collaborators Henry Broadhead and Andy Votel to reimagine tracks from The Silver Globe and Modern Kosmology alongside new ambient pieces and interludes.

Though guitarist Pete Philipson and keyboard player Raz Ullah will be present, the focus will be Weaver, who says she conceived Loops specifically as a collection she could perform solo.

Accompanying the music are images by multi-media artist Sam Wiehl and filmmaker Nick Farramond, director of The Architect video.

“With Loops, I knew I wanted to do a comprehensive project, a project I could do on my own,” Weaver says. “I wanted it to be more interesting than straight reworks and though I didn't have a solid plan, I knew I wanted it to be more instrumental, more like an art installation, really.”

Loops often sees Weaver stretching tracks from those previous records into works which are even more hypnotic and spacey.

Often she found herself repurposing forgotten fragments from the albums' original sessions.

“You forget certain things you've done along the way which you've discarded,” she says. “It's not that they were bad parts or mistakes, it's simply that the track had gone a certain way.

“Because this was a more experimental project in my head, it was easier to see what would fit where, especially elements like noises, bits of Morse code and weird sounds that wouldn't necessarily work on a pop record. It was really good on that creative level."

She returns to Scotland on October 11 and 12 with Ullah and Philipson when the three bring their new Fenella project to Glasgow's Glad Cafe and the Bellfield in Portobello.

Partly recorded in a remote cottage on the Applecross Peninsula in Wester Ross, the new record, out in November, is an atmospheric imaginary soundtrack to a cult 1981 animation by Hungarian Marcell Jankovics.

Weaver says she is also currently working on the follow-up to Modern Kosmology.

Given her unpredictable form, it could sound like anything.

“I think it'll be more uplifting,” she offers. “That's what always seems to happen, I think, one record will be quite lo-fi, the next will be epic.”

Jane Weaver, Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, September 14