A legendary figure in underground experimental circles starts the evening on a suitably confusing note. Richard Youngs, a decades-long Glasgow transplant, is frittering away on an acoustic guitar as the audience trickle in, a good 25 minutes before his supposed start time. People mostly watch as nonchalantly as they can, but the steady picking has a dizzying quality that draws you in until he abruptly begins to sing. The song continues straight from the noodling without pause and mostly consists of further seemingly improvised guitar and percussive stomps and knee slaps. “You are far away…I am far away” the final two words being repeated ad nauseam; alternately yelped, crooned or just murmured. There’s even a latent Thom Yorke ache in some of the higher notes if you squint your ears hard enough. You could hear a pin drop, or a pint unfortunately, but Youngs continues unfazed on his psychedelic journey until it all just halts as suddenly as it began. A brilliant opening.

In keeping with the DIY spirit which the Old Hairdresser’s can’t help but embody, Ben Chasny, aka Six Organs of Admittance, takes to the stage direct from the crowd and tunes up without fanfare. The room is full up and the temperature is rising; the crowd fall quiet as he approaches the mic. He starts with a deep cut from 2000’s Dust & Chimes, tapping into the sun-fried drone that used to burn his guitar work to an acid crisp back in the day.

Most songs date from the 2000s and veer between warm, intricate instrumentals like ‘Drinking with Jack’, ‘Wolves’ Pup’ or ‘Elk River’, and heady, incantatory trips like ‘Taken by Ascent’ or ‘Journey through Sankuan Pass’. Occasional new songs like ‘Pilar’ fit in neatly as well despite its shorter, more polished feel (Chasny even quips that he’s “less interested in being psychedelic these days…”). There’s a quick sludgy detour through a cover of Melvins’ ‘With Teeth’ which allows Chasny to tell a quick story of when his teenage band (who were terrible by his own admission) supported Melvins and Buzz was mightily unimpressed with their soundcheck.

The peak moments are when the delicate arrangements are matched with feather-light, affecting vocals like on ‘Home’ or ‘Words for Two.’ But overall it’s the careful threading between subtle beauty, knotty fretwork and swirling passages across the hour-long set that make it a captivating performance. There’s no sense of over-curation as Chasny keeps it fun and spontaneous, but decades of experience shine through and demonstrate why Six Organs of Admittance remain a rare and, at times, untouchable presence when it comes experimental folk.