Nick Pynn With Kate Daisy Grant, The Old Market, Hove, May 13

Nick Pynn’s multi-faceted music is as original and far-reaching as the ideas that inspire it. Whether gliders over the A23 or an underwater post office off Vanuatu in the South Pacific, Pynn creates a scene layer by layer. Using one rare instrument after another, from dulcimer to theremin, and live-looping them together, he produces beautiful, rounded soundscapes.

He’s a dab foot with the bass pedals, too, and throws in quirks and oddities that add to the picture. In the home-worn flat, off Nicholson Street, he uses a toy piano, xylophone and wine glasses – the Crystal Sisters – to convey the dodgy flat with leaky taps and the drip, drip, dripping rain.

Pynn is a witty host, with stories of Morse code at midnight, submarines and palindromes. And he creates his magical world to capture and enthral – stretching from the powerful and uplifting Cala Azzurro to the fun of the shortest song played on the smallest instrument, his coco-lele, made from half a coconut and a ukulele fretboard. In the second half, Pynn takes a back seat with his violin, for singer Kate Daisy Grant, accompanied by cellist Hannah Russell and percussionist and guitarist Ken Rose. Grant also looks askance at the world, complementing Pynn with her sometimes sharp pop songs, such as One Thing You Should Know About Me, or her insightful indie numbers, such as Jimmy. But she is at her best when she steps from behind the keyboard for her haunting, melancholic love songs, such as A Place At Your Table.

Pynn then returns to round off an eclectic evening by razzin’ up his bow for the full-steam-ahead Orange Blossom Special, leaving us with another memorable musical image.