CINEMA goers who caught David Mackenzie’s 2003 film Young Adam may not have known it, but they were listening to Alasdair Roberts.

The Scottish folk musician played hurdy-gurdy on the soundtrack to the British drama, starring Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton.

Asked if the soundtrack, called Lead Us Not into Temptation, which was written by former Talking Heads songwriter David Byrne, gained him much exposure, Alasdair replies: “No, not really.

“I just turned up with a broken hurdy-gurdy and recorded a drone for an hour. It was fun thing to do.”

The musician’s response reflects the fact he is fairly unknown in the mainstream world of music.

In the folk world however, he is a popular and highly-respected singer songwriter.

On Sunday, Alasdair returns to the Leigh Folk Festival for the second time, once again at the personal request of the event’s artistic director Paul Collier.

“I had a great time last year,” says Alasdair, in a Scottish accent.“It was really busy and pretty crazy.

“I don’t really get to play a lot of folk festival gigs, but it’s one of the more open-minded ones.”

Despite the influence of his father, the folk musician Alan Roberts, who played and released material with Dougie MacLean in the late Seventies, Alasdair didn’t rise up through the traditional folk club circuit.

Raised in Kilmahog, a small town not too far from Dunblane, he was instead influenced by the music scene of Glasgow, where he has now lived for more than a decade.

“I was exposed to my father’s music when I grew up.” he says, “But it was growing up in Glasgow when I got more into DIY rock and indie.

“But then I gradually became more and more interested in folk.”

In 1994 Alasdair began to release material under the name Appendix Out, through Chicago based label Drag City.

After three albums, he abandoned the name in favour of his own, and has been putting out records as Alasdair Roberts ever since.

“My own records alternate between traditional songs – versions of old ballads – and newly- written material,” he explains.

“I listen widely to a lot of music, so I take ideas from whatever I hear, but it always seems to come back to interrogations of tradition and notions of tradition. There is a metaphysical strain to the lyrics.

“I’m sure the fact I’m Scottish influences my music and my lyrics. I still use imagery of the natural world.”

Alasdair’s first solo release the Crook of my Arm, in 2001, was a guitar and voice album of traditional songs, and in 2005 he recorded an album of traditional death ballads called No Earthly Man.

But his own-penned records have equally impressed the critics with the Amber Gatherers featuring in Mojo magazine’s best 50 albums of 2007, and the follow-up Spoils included in the same list for 2009.

The musician has also collaborated with a number of other players, most notably Will Oldham and Jason Molina.

“I love collaborating with all sorts of musicians,” says Alasdair. “I’m really interested in bringing people together from different musical backgrounds.”

He is set to achieve this next year when he records with the Gaelic singer Mairi Morrison.

But there’s one area the musician wants to explore further in the future – film soundtracks.

After Lead Us Not into Temptation and another soundtrack for a documentary about the Scottish artist Angus McPhee, he’s keen to do more.

He adds: “It’s interesting to think about the ways that film makers work, and just to learn about new things through that medium.”

l Alasdair is playing the Billet Wharf stage on Sunday. His new album, Too Long In This Condition, is released through Drag City, on Tuesday