NOT many folk bands employ dry ice on stage. But then, Lau are not like many folk bands.

On this night, they ventured more into the realms of psychedelic prog rock than anything from the traditional canon, although their fascinating doodlings and experiments were always firmly rooted in that milieu.

The show’s first half featured mainly old songs “from the vaults,” while after the interval they showcased most of  their new album Midnight & Closedown – a real musical smorgasbord.

Their extended, largely instrumental fare in the second half felt very much rooted in the 1970s, with strong echoes of Mike Oldfield, Roy Harper and Roxy Music and that feel was enhanced by a stage cluttered with puzzling gadgets and gizmos, brought in from the studio to allow for the sound of their new album to be reproduced without compromise.

 Most baffling of the contraptions was “Morag,” a homemade, echoey stick plugged into Martin Green’s keyboards. It somehow seemed to have a noisy, crackling life of its own, driving many of the songs forwards – and backwards. There were drum machines and spooky devices that recorded and played back parts of each song as they progressed.

At times the soundscape was so confusing — in an eccentric and intriguing way — that it was often unclear who was doing what, or where the boundary lay between man and machine.

Yet despite the prog-rock feel, this was fiercely contemporary music, forward-looking rather than derivative. It pushed folk across new boundaries and into a ghostly realm of half-darkness, fittingly illuminated on stage by subdued mauve lighting, a collection of lanterns and that wafting dry ice.

Some hard-line folk traditionalists might stand aghast at what Lau are doing to their favourite music but the audience lapped up the entire set.

We can count ourselves lucky that this band have the nerve to take themselves in this direction – and should look forward to whatever surprises they offer in future.