Gig review: Archive Trails - Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh

“THAT’S half an hour,” apologised Aileen Campbell at the end of her set, “I would usually take longer.” Longer, that is, to learn an entire song from start to finish.

Hers is just one of the three high-concept responses to Glasgow promoter Tracer Trails’ invitation to three Scots musicians to search the University of Edinburgh’s School of Scottish Studies archive for inspiration. The way the crowd would help Campbell with troublesome lyrics and come to sing along by the end epitomised the reflection of folk’s homely and inclusive aspect on display here.

Drew Wright, who records as Wounded Knee, played fast and loose with the core idea, taking the view that “the musician is the document”. His set incorporated his own songs, covers and snippets from the archive – all chosen bingo-style by the audience from a list of every song he knows how to play – delivered in a hypnotic baritone. Some might have called that cheating, but a finger-clicking a capella reading of Eric B & Rakim’s rap classic I Know You Got Soul, the dedication to John Muir in his own Whither Wither and a closing condensation of his Pentland Noir and Ewan MacColl’s version of The Dowie Dens O’ Yarrow echoed the folk tendency towards reappropriation.

Finally Alasdair Roberts and puppeteer Shane Connolly delivered the most delightfully uncanny set of the evening, an odd, ritualistic encounter between an ape-like man and a Satanic giant (a resurrected, century-old induction ritual into a secret farmhands’ society) followed by the quaint but amusingly staged Borders folk tale Galoshins, a seafront amusement incorporating swordfights and witchcraft, and a musical backing which brought the past vividly to life.

Rating: ****