For seasoned observers of the British folk scene, January 1999 brought something quietly remarkable. The subject was a low-budget, self-titled, all-instrumental on the Shetland Islands.

The first point of interest was that it was an extraordinarily beautiful, exquisitely played record that confirmed the arrival of arguably the first new steel-strung guitarist of note since the Bert Jansch/John Renbourn generation back in the 1960s - and certainly since the more ghetto-bound Gordon Giltrap/Nic Jones/Martin Simpson refinings of that style in the 1970s.

The second point was the publicity the album received. Broadsheet newspapers, glossy monthlies and the modest organs of the never-say-die folk revival all leaped on Reid's compositional freshness yet seemingly well-rooted style. Its legions of earnest American devotees saw it as evidence that the messiah of that increasingly arcane byway of music known Strangely enough, the messiah spoke with a Belfast accent.

"People need to describe a musician in terms of somebody else," says Reid with the breeziness of one to whom the categorisation question is an old favourite. "So for those people familiar with British finger style, that's what they hear. I had no conception that was what I was doing, and consequently sent it off to a whole range of people in the media - and I think that was part of the winning formula. It was naivety, but then again not naivety. I would still send anything I did to absolutely everybody I could think of, in the hope that it would click with someone."

Two-and-a-half years down the line, Reid is doing the whole thing again, but who is he, where has he come from and is he not, in fact, closer to a one-man Penguin Cafe Orchestra than to an old-style guitar hero?

Growing up at the leafy end of east Belfast, and currently living with his partner and manager (the managing came first), Kresanna Aigner, and their recently born twins in even leafier south Belfast, Reid spent his youth in standard electric guitar bands before having a Damascus experience with ragtime music and a cheap acoustic guitar that set him off to music college in London for a year. That was followed by a popular and periodically ongoing residency as teacher of guitar classes at Belfast's Crescent Arts Centre, where he also rents an office.

Something of a bon viveur around the cosmopolitan coffee houses that abound in the university area of the city, Reid nevertheless puts in the graft and takes music seriously as a business. Talent aside, this attitude is central in his success in a city swarming with washed-up musical wannabes and whingeing also-rans. Indeed, who would have thought that an unamplified instrumentalist could launch a career of any sort from a place known principally for its angsty guitar bands?

"I suppose in the context of Belfast I am a bit unusual in having done that," says Reid over a sunny Sunday cappuccino in one of his regular haunts. "But at the same time it's always seemed absolutely obvious to me. I've had conversations with the kind of people you're talking about and a paraphrase might run along the lines of, 'the chairman of Sony hasn't got in touch with me,' to which I'd say: 'Well, have you actually called him?'

"About five years ago, I realised it was a business and that one had to behave in a businesslike manner. And as soon as I got rid of any notions of the chairman of Sony arriving with a million quid, things started to happen.

"Once you've written the music and done the recording the artistry's over, and pragmatism on a business level begins. 'Can I get to the point where I can feed my family doing this?' is a question I've been thinking fairly seriously about recently.

"It used to be I could work really hard for a month and then take it easier for a couple of months, but since the kids have come along that's changed. Yet the size of the mountain doesn't really interest me, so long as I'm interested in the challenge." . It boasts a superb ensemble, including Gino Lupari on bodhrβn, Brian Connor on piano, Eddi Reader on guest vocals and, most pertinently, a neither-trad-nor-classical string quartet featuring the likes of Maire Breatnach and Oleg Ponomorev of the Russian gypsy group Loyko.

The material veers seamlessly between pieces of great cinematic beauty, cart-wheeling rumbustiousness and a slightly bizarre pre-war tea-dance pastiche that the Bonzo Dog Band would have sold their granny's greenhouse for.

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra - quirky yet sublime - remain the overall reference point, underlined by a cover of their Music For A Found Harmonium.

"A lot of people think it's a great departure," says Reid, who clearly delights in confounding those people, "but I think the clues were all there. If you play the first CD backwards, the message 'there will be more strings' is plainly audible. But then one of the things I would like my audiences to expect is something different."

Having toured quite extensively in Scotland, England and parts of America, Reid aspires to European cafΘ and neo-classical music, but is generally pigeon-holed as either a Brit-folk guitar hero or a fringe beneficiary of the Celtic scene, within which he has quietly moved for some time.

"When I write a tune," he explains, "I just want it to be the best tune I can make it - not an exercise in writing something that someone can describe as a bit classical, or a bit folky, or whatever else."

While he has played a number of sell-out solo concerts in his home town, barring odd special-guesting to the likes of Richard Thompson, An·na and Martin Carthy, the cities of the Republic have so far eluded him.

"I'm determined to get it," he says, "determined to get viable concerts in the bigger towns. Mind you, myself and everyone I know in the music business are at a loss as to how you achieve that. Do you have any ideas?"

Alas, there the coffee and the cassette ran out. Some mountains one must leave to those with an iron will and a better address book than mine. Colin Reid: whatever else, he's a touch of class.

Tilt is released on Topic Records on June 18th. The Colin Reid Trio play the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast, on June 23rd (bookings on 048-9024 2338)