Instal 09 @ The Arches / CCA, 20-22 Mar

Despite the demise of Triptych, the experimental music scene in Scotland has gone from strength to strength in recent years. This is in no small part attributable to promoters Arika, whose flagship event Instal is a shining example of how a festival should operate. Instal makes the avant-garde exciting, fun, invigorating and accessible without ever ‘dumbing down’, condescending or trivialising music which is often parodied as of interest only to those adorned with jazz fags, polonecks and curiously-styled goatees.

Instal’s main appeal has always been the strength of its programming, which requires no former knowledge of the acts involved - a small amount of trust pays off with a slew of new favourites and amazing new ways of doing things.

As always, highlights are impossible to predict, but the potential is still omnipresent: Nikos Veliotis’s cello sings like the most forward-thinking electronica whilst being grounded down to the dust and Joan La Barbara’s searing abstract vocal tectonics (you’ve heard her already – she was the voice of one of the eponymous extra terrestrials in Alien Resurrection). Then there's Seymour Wright’s deconstructed saxophone, Tamio’s full blown noise rock, needleless turntablist Otomo Yoshihide’s thrilling duo with Sachiko M and locals Usurper’s ultra-minimalist psychedelia which may all or each inspire a newfound love for a new way of making music.

Arika’s philosophy has always been that although you won’t like everything, you’re guaranteed to find several acts who make the ticket price more than worthwhile. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “a mind stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimensions” – it’s time to put that theory to the test.