Occasionally, an artist comes along who is so fresh and unique that they bowl me over: someone who’s got substance, as opposed to just style. Austrian musician Manu Delago is definitely in the first category. Besides playing a modern, Swiss-made instrument called the hang drum (which isn’t actually a drum, it’s from the musical instrument group of idiophones), he’s a multi-percussionist.

Hang or handpan music can be very tranquil and euphonious. Delago has toured with Bjork and Anoushka Shankar, among other notables, and performed the world over with some of the finest orchestras. This show at The Gate (such a gem in itself), though, is his first audiovisual solo-programme. With Environ Me, named after his latest album, he wanted to bring together the elements – fire, water, air, earth – and he certainly did, bringing nature to us in unexpected ways.

Suddenly, we were in the Tyrolean Alps (via three video screens) being warmed by a crackling fire; thus began Delago on the handpans with Emberplay, sombre and eerie, yet comforting. And so for much of the event, this magnificent vista was our locale. We witnessed and heard pebbles being dropped, very zen-like, into water, causing ripples, accompanied serenely by the handpan. The sound turned electric and frantic as four sets of hands appeared, gesticulating exactly as if in a synchronised water ballet for digits. The camera filmed underwater, too, and as Liquid Hands unfolded, we discovered four figures immersed in a lake at night. Ending as it began, the music became calm, the hands disappearing underneath the water.

Now in the sun, we were paragliding with a pilot and Delago over the glittering Alps. “As with all tracks from Environ Me, I try to incorporate the sound of our environment, of our surroundings, into the music. In this case, it’s about air and wind,” he has explained. Delago wanted to “make the air visible and musically audible” while airborne, so he took organ pipes up and miked them. The result, Acoustic Aviation, was marvellous and freeing. Decidedly Far Eastern in tone, he showed his skill also on Vietnamese gongs, temple blocks, cymbals and crystal harp.

Part of the experience was seeing how the imaginative 38-year-old composer moved between his instruments with ease and elicited industrial sounds from cold hardware, making them musical and recreating them live. On a snowless mountain, during Interference, Delago and friends drummed on empty ski lift machinery in the shadow of giant electricity pylons. He could even make the demolishment and dismemberment of a car in a scrapyard a mournful death (Autoshred). Thankfully, much is recycled.

FaunaSauna, the Innsbruck-born musician said, has to do with rising temperatures. He picked five of his favourite videos of animals – including of frogs, a woodpecker and a proud capercaillie – and alongside, matched and supplemented their sounds. Delago wins points for practising what he espouses about caring for and protecting our environment, demonstrating that with his deeds and music.

The audience, going on the sound of their applause, was considerably appreciative; my plus one, who’d never heard of him before, declared she thoroughly enjoyed herself. I thought the presentation of Transformotion, for instance, was a bit monotonous, and some compositions not mentioned here didn’t stand out in my mind. Not sure whether that’s because only one song delivered vocals (by video), or because I didn’t think they were truly memorable musically. To me, Delago is most successful when he employs singers in part, for variation and gives smaller doses of harder, industrial sounds. He demonstrated his prowess on a regular drumkit too, even if the volume was higher than necessary. A mixed bag overall, then, but Manu Delago is undoubtedly an exceptional hang player and percussionist whose music, integrating acoustic, electronic and nature, is striking and lovely.

Manu Delago, The Gate, Cardiff, Sat 4 Feb

words RHONDA LEE REALI photos SOPHIE BENTOVIM