Julia Holter / Ela Orleans, CCA, 20 November

A support slot from Ela Orleans is an astute choice for Julia Holter: this Glasgow-based Polish solo artist explores a similarly dreamlike world, driven by a compulsive desire to excavate cultural memory. Orleans uses loop pedals to sync spacey synth chords, otherworldly vocals and jazzy programmed percussion, against a projected backdrop of psychedelically manipulated archive footage. The overall effect is simultaneously poppy and hallucinatory, comforting and befuddling in equal measure.

Julia Holter’s relationship with the cultural ghosts haunting her music is less tangible, but equally significant: the current LP from the LA-based singer and composer, Loud City Song, was inspired by her love for the 1958 musical Gigi. On record, the sense of temporal blurring is emphasized by the blunted edges of Holter’s arrangements; live, however – with Holter on synth and vocals, accompanied by drums, sax and cello – these songs acquire a stronger sense of definition, emphasising their complexity and otherworldly qualities.

While the set draws heavily upon the recent material, last year’s Ekstasis is also well-represented: songs like Marienbad and In the Same Room, which have a spaced-out effortlessness on record, emerge here as intricate balancing acts between the four musicians. It’s one that is pulled off with aplomb: this is the last night of a long tour, and the sense of intuitive connection between the band is palpable. Holter, like Orleans, might have an unusually immersive relationship with the past, but that doesn’t stop either of them making music which doesn’t quite sound like anything else. [Sam Wiseman]