MOGWAI frontman Stuart Braithwaite is set to play a rare solo set at a live music showcase in Fife.

Braithwaite headlines this month’s Tae Sup wi’ a Fifer, the eclectic night curated by celebrated singer-songwriter James Yorkston.

Having toured the US in August with bandmates Dominic Aitchison, Martin Bulloch and Barry Burns, Braithwaite will play Kirkcaldy’s Adam Smith Theatre alone, accompanied by only his guitar.

“All I’m certain of just now is that I’m going to be there and there’s going to be a guitar involved,” Braithwaite says. “My plan was to play a solo guitar set but maybe it’ll be a case of me not being able to handle working that out and I’ll just play Mogwai songs, who knows?”

The National: Stuart BraithwaiteStuart Braithwaite

He adds: “I’ve never played a gig in Kirkcaldy before, so I’m looking forward to it. James asked me and I thought: ‘Why not?’”

Braithwaite heads a line-up featuring Welsh multi-instrumentalist Gwenifer Raymond and Bell Lungs, a one-woman band on near-perpetual tour across the UK, Europe and beyond.

The Mogwai man’s Kirkcaldy appearance comes just days after the band play their final gig of the year in Brooklyn as part of music bible Pitchfork’s Octfest.

The New York date marks the first time Mogwai have played Brooklyn since 2009, when Vincent Moon and Nathanael Le Scouarnec shot what would become Burning, a live film about the band.

During the winter months, Mogwai will begin working on their 10th studio album, the follow-up to top ten-smashing Every Country’s Sun.

The National: Mogwai are set to work on their tenth studio album next yearMogwai are set to work on their tenth studio album next year

“We’ll start recording it next summer, which isn’t that far away,” says Braithwaite. “So I think it starts now, in terms of getting back into that mode of writing. We all write music, so it’s a case of starting to write demos and getting together to rehearse. It’ll be nice to get back into that mode.”

Though primarily an instrumental band, vocal tracks have featured on records back to 1997 debut album Mogwai Young Team. With Party In The Dark, Every Country’s Sun’s soaring, thunderous lead single, Braithwaite sang the closest thing the post-rockers have had to a pop hit.

Braithwaite has played solo for Yorkston before, back in 2013 when he performed a mix of Mogwai songs and covers at London’s Union Chapel as part of a Christmas show presented by the Cellardyke-based songwriter.

“I remember it well,” says Yorkston with a fond chuckle. “I’ve got the vegan thing going on and the promoter thought they were being really helpful by booking us a table at a vegan restaurant. But it was four miles away from the venue. I remember Stuart just running on stage as soon as we got back.”

With his Tae Sup gatherings, Yorkston regularly renders the Fife town a cultural hotspot to match anything in the central belt.

The eclectic nights often feature giants of folk such as Archie Fisher, Horse and Vashti Bunyan, indie heroes such as Emma Pollock and Gruff Rhys and lesser-known artists Yorkston has discovered on the road as a solo artist or as part of Yorkston Thorne Khan, his collaborative project with jazz bassist Jon Thorne and Hindustani classical musician Suhail Yusuf Khan.

The National: Emma PollockEmma Pollock

Though predominantly a music night, editions regularly feature artists who work with words – novelists like Ian Rankin, poets such as Jenny Lindsay, even stand-up comedians such as Phill Jupitus, who performed for Yorkston in summer 2018 alongside American alt folk legend Michael Hurley and angel-voiced Francophile Scot Siobhan Wilson.

Next month, Hollie McNish, winner of the Ted Hughes Award for Nobody Told Me, a poetic memoir on parenthood and politics, headlines an evening also featuring Ye Vagabonds aka bilingual Irish brothers Brian and Diarmuid MacGloinn and Nancy Kerr and Luke Daniels, two of the most vital performers in the UK folk scene.

December’s event – currently the last night on Tae Sup’s Creative Scotland-supported calendar – features a line-up headed by award-winning comic and broadcaster Josie Long. Music will come from 2017 BBC Radio 2 Folk Musician of the Year singer/harpist Rachel Newton and Turkish folk musician Ozgur Baba.

Yorkston discovered Baba playing his saz, a pear-shaped lute, on Youtube where his performance of Dertli Dolap (“Endless Trouble”) has had over two million views.

“I had been listening to some Ethiopian music and what came on next was a video of Ozgur sitting in a farmyard singing and playing the saz with all these chickens milling around in the background,” says Yorkston. “There are explosions too, I think they were doing mining or something. It’s a really hypnotic piece of music.”

He adds: “When I saw it I thought: ‘This is what Tae Sup is for’. It’s for bringing people over like Ozgur who otherwise wouldn’t be playing Scotland, other than maybe Celtic Connections. It’s about finding these not-so-well-known names and bringing them in to play with people with a bigger profile at the time.

“For example we had Lankum play, back when they were called Lynched. Since then, they’ve gone on to win various awards and are playing bigger and bigger venues. It’s about interesting people I’ve discovered or seen on the scene and bringing them over to Kirkcaldy. I’m lucky that most of the time, the audience trusts me.”

That trust extends further than Fife, further than Scotland, with people journeying from Europe and even the US to see Yorkston’s unusual but complementary line-ups in the intimate surrounds of a smaller, 180-capacity room at the Adam Smith Theatre.

If Tae Sup was presented in London, Yorkston says, they would take place at the likes of the 900-seater Union Chapel.

Keeping it small takes the pressure off selling hundreds of tickets while retaining the intimate atmosphere Yorkston says is vital to making Tae Sup the attractive proposition it is.

“We don’t use the main big room at Adam Smith,” says Yorkston. “While the big names we’ve had like Justin Currie, King Creosote, Linton Kwesi Johnson would easily sell out the wee room, there’s something about keeping it there that I really enjoy. There’s a welcoming vibe to it that’s really important to what we’re trying to do.”

Yorkston, who reveals that a new Yorkston Thorne Khan album is set to be launched at Celtic Connections in January, agrees that what unites the artists he selects is a strong sense of self-belief, a commitment to shaping their own path.

Having Braithwaite, the de facto frontman of a highly-respected band with an international following, perform with artists more from music’s further reaches such as the Appalachian-influenced Raymond and Bell Lungs, makes sense both in terms of practical numbers and ethos.

“As soon as Stuart said he’d do it, this was a relatively easy one to put together,” says Yorkston. “Obviously Mogwai are a big name in Scotland and around the world so I figured, with much respect to the other artists, that Stuart would help sell the tickets.”

Having spent much of the spring and early summer touring The Route To The Harmonium, his first solo record in five years, Yorkston says the selection of master guitarist Raymond was something of a personal treat.

“I’ve played before with Gwenifer, who has this John Fahey-style of railroad finger-picking, but never actually met her,” he says. “I’m hoping she’ll be amazing. In fact, I know she will be amazing.”

Yorkston knows Bell Lungs from the Fence days, when the DIY experimentalist would play with the likes of Viking Moses. Her striking vocals and evocative soundscapes have since featured on the airwaves of BBC Radio 3, 4 and 6. As well as composing for theatre, spoken word and dance productions, Bell Lungs spends her spare time as a community musicians, offering workshops on analogue music technology, songwriting and free improvisation.

“I figured Stuart’s fanbase would be open-minded enough to be interested get her,” says Yorkston. “I remember her Fence shows often being beautiful, and often being quite out-there too. She has carried on making her own music, her own out-there thing, which is something I absolutely love, people who are doing their own thing.

“And her rider is super-easy, all she wants is a bottle of whisky.”

October 25, Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, 7.45pm, £15. www.taesup.co.uk