As icy winds whipped outside, a politely expectant crowd took their seats to witness a performance in which a campfire would have seemed an entirely appropriate prop.

The formula was one pondered by music romantics on a regular basis - take four leading players from any genre, sling them together and watch your own genetically modified sonic fantasy unfurl.

Apply this to folk and the quartet Zero Degrees of Separation concocted an intriguing mix, despite their protestations beforehand that this was "contemporary acoustic music".

This could have been Folk: The Musical - a hippy Utopia, awash with cow bells, organs, acoustic strings and hushed introductions as the singers swapped roles.

Adem, by far the most compelling performer on the night and architect of proceedings, bounded around with an impish cheek, swaying meditatively at the organ between forays into the spotlight with bells and guitars.

Vashti Bunyan was the godmother, cooing over the rotating cast with equal parts thrill and timidity. The crackled and soaring tones with which she delivered songs older than most of her audience were dazzlingly heartfelt and sweet at first but mutated into irksomely repetitive self-indulgent dirges.

If Bunyan was the predictable safety blanket, Juana Molina was her crazed South American alter ego.

Oozing eccentricity from every pore, the Argentine often cut an isolated figure, left alone on stage to mix her solo songs.

Canadian band Vetiver added the required smoky strumming and husky musing and would have benefited most had the collaboration had more time to perfect its collective tightness.

The experiment did find some success, but "nice" was the tellingly accurate way Adem described the results - understandably lacking in coherence yet matching the overall sum of its gifted participants.