It seems unlikely that even this broodingly handsome, rangy Argentinian will be able to silence the hellishly over-stuffed upper room of a pub in the heart of Nathan Barley country, but from the achingly plangent opening chords of Deadweight on Velveteen, Jose Gonzalez almost manages.

This is rarefied territory: reminiscent of the late Arthur Russell, but less elliptical, without Russell's wild otherness; the John Martyn of Solid Air but crisper, with little of Martyn's smeary take on the blues; Nick Drake but fuller-throated, and without the wanness that often afflicts Drake's disciples.

Floating in a stark, beatless vacuum, the nearest these songs get to percussive is the occasional soft, woody knocking of the ball of Gonzalez's hand against his classical guitar; rhythm deriving principally from the repetitions of prickly, spooked figures that draw on the sinuous metre and chromatic inflections of bossa nova and folk, free of the oppressive march of anything connected with rock.

This music doesn't simply demand stillness and quiet, it creates it, spinning a gauzy bubble inside which time, as measured by the noisy, conventional world, seems to slow. Such is Gonzalez's command of this etherised other realm that there are moments of supreme intensity when you feel your heartbeat stop, then - a kind of weightlessness into which rushes a lovely panic as you're reminded of the brilliant terror of being alive.

As if his own songs weren't magical enough, he conjures a version of Massive Attack's Teardrop that doesn't shame Liz Frazer's original vocal (more than Massive Attack themselves could manage on a recent tour) and, most extraordinarily, a rippling take on Kylie's Put Your Hand on Your Heart that is positively chilling.

That is Gonzalez's other talent: fractured missives from a place of numb reflection that are anything but numb. Memories of emotional crisis delivered in shards, like looking into a mirror reconstituted from fragments. In this sweltering room, the billowing of icy air.