Photograph: Minoru Tsuyuki

Southpaw; Sat 14
(Le) Poisson Rouge; Sun 15

Helena Espvall is a Swedish cellist in possession of sunken eyes, a big puff of 1970s hair and a gentle, truthful voice. She resides in Philadelphia, where she is an active participant in the city’s eccentric folk scene, having played with Espers, the Valerie Project and the mother of all such mystics, British folksinger Vashti Bunyan. In Masaki Batoh, longtime ringleader of the mighty Japanese psychedelic group Ghost, Espvall has found a compatible Eastern collaborator. Like her, Batoh plays music that teeters between serenity and portent, as if he were performing to a yoga class hours before the earth’s destruction.

Late last year, Espvall and Batoh convened in Tokyo to record a self-titled album (for Drag City). The songs sound positively ancient—all acoustic guitar and timpani, cello and Tibetan bells—but the casual worldliness inherent to the duo’s work renders it very contemporary. Much of their repertoire is composed of Swedish folk songs, as played in Japan, by musicians heavily influenced by British and American folk music. Most gripping, however, is “Death Letter,” a Son House tune sung by Batoh in a clean, puzzled tone, one part Mississippi Delta, the other Kyoto. The record does not come out for a month, but the players precede it with a short U.S. tour that marks their stage debut as a duo. They’ll be opening for Damon & Naomi—a like-minded pair who live in Boston and, similar to Espvall and Batoh, draw from everywhere.