Canada, it seems, may be the new New York. In the wake of Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene, Bell Orchestre are the latest fractured art-rock experimentalists to emerge from this hotbed of the musical avant garde. The nation that gave us Bryan Adams and Celine Dion may finally be making amends.

Bell Orchestre is the side project of violinist Sarah Neufeld and gangling, double bass-player Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire. This instrumental five-piece started by scoring music for a Montreal contemporary dance troupe, but their repertoire is far too jagged and atonal to pass for mere incidental music.

Their debut album Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light is an enjoyably cerebral affair, as if post-rock icons Tortoise had finally learned to write tunes, but tonight their effervescence lifts them way above arid math rock. Neufeld, wielding her electric violin like an assault weapon, is a joyously vivacious focus.

Their music is all nervy lulls and insatiable crescendos, like Godspeed! You Black Emperor shorn of their polemical agenda. Les Lumieres Pt 2 is jerky supper-club jazz, like Autechre on an improvisational kick, while Throw It on a Fire suggests the Yeah Yeah Yeahs essaying wanton chamber music.

The track (music box intro) occupies the same classical-meets-art-rock terrain as Kronos Quartet, but Neufeld and Parry are far from po-faced. The magic realism of Recording a Tape (Typewriter Duet) sees percussionist Stefan Schneider picking out a sketchy rhythm on an ancient manual typewriter.

It's all good fun, but Bell Orchestre's esoteric ethos means they are unlikely to equal Arcade Fire's chart-strafing achievements. A career of performing at All Tomorrow's Parties and remixing Björk album tracks awaits them, and you suspect they will be perfectly happy with that.