H, the son and nephew respectively of eccentric singers Jacques Higelin and Brigitte Fontaine, is something of a musical lacuna himself. Throughout the course of thirteen albums, the Frenchman has pinballed between jazz, rock, pop and disco and on L’Homme du Monde his latest effort he’s done all of them.

Looking like a cross between Joe Strummer and Lieutenant Columbo, H gangled onto the stage in a shiny gold jacket several sizes too small. He was the instantly recognisable comic book kid who dances at school discos with neither care nor co-ordination, looping through uncool and winding up cool. His rasping, chalky voice interrupted itself with a rabid, cartoon falsetto; his musical sense of humour often strayed into serious funk.

Despite occasional minor slips, H’s band was game enough to rise to the occasion. The bassist (as in double and guitar) and drummer were tight, keyboard and electric were inventive and effective. Though many in the crowd took time to “get” H, he managed to get two encores out of them.

And he was comfortable in his monologues, joking about Belgian liquidity, singing the Marseillaise and reentering the stage midway through the set in the superhero suit from his video for the shameless I Wanna Dance With Madonna. Arthur H clearly has the balls to experiment with pop, even if his costume shows them off a bit too much.

After an awkward warm-up from studenty noodlers Wixel, who might be the Flemish answer to Sigur Rós, the stage of Brussels’ Ancienne Belgique was quickly cleared and rearranged for the main event of the evening. Matthew Herbert, renowned for the idiosyncratic music he records under a schizophrenic array of monikers, led on his jazz band and calmly started to work his electronic equipment.

Herbert comes across live as something like a cross between Charlie Chaplin, John Cazale and Doctor Frankenstein. At times, he tricks his audience into thinking he has little control over the output of his machines, but this is pure modesty, given the extraordinary task he sets himself. For, as his band hops smoothly through jazz numbers led by quirky singer Eska, Herbert limits himself to sampling only what is played by them.

The contrast between buzzing, grating feedback and rich brass ought to have been more than a little painful, but the odds between these two unusual bedfellows were evened by Eska’s marvellous voice. Herbert’s past work with Björk is analogous.

So if some spectators seemed rather bemused at first by Herbert’s noisy and very occasionally jarring trickery, the obvious bonhomie among the players was endearing and the head of steam gathered by each track could have left no-one in any doubt that this had been a fascinating display of twenty-first century cabaret.