When I saw Moby in concert, he spent much of his time standing on his turntables and raising his arms in the air. He seemed to think he was Jesus. I begged to differ. Any music that is created largely through the magic of programming runs the risk of being impossible to perform live. Saxon Shore will have to cross that divide when they play in Gardner Lounge on Saturday night.

First, let’s make something clear that the band seems slightly reluctant to publicize: they are a completely instrumental project. At first, in my ignorance, I thought they just sounded sort of like the Postal Service without clever turns of phrase, but upon listening more closely to their most recent album, “The Exquisite Death of Saxon Shore,” their mission seems to be to make broadly heartshaking music instead of writing pithy little songs. Wide, entrancing guitar melodies are layered over computer ticks and songbird chirps, with one track blending into the next.

Five fellows committed to the project put together the album, even if it meant exchanging parts of tracks from different towns while they held down real jobs. When they did enter the studio it was with Flaming Lips’ producer Dave Fridmann, and Fridmann’s commitment to a Lips-like clean, vast sound is very evident in the album. Their live show might be a little less mellow, since they sometimes use it to work out new tracks, but this could give you a chance to see more into the creative process behind such epic music. Hopefully Saxon Shore’s ethereal energy will carry over.

Anathallo and Braille are opening for Saxon Shore, and they will get a few words in edge-wise. Anathallo, based in Mount Pleasant, Mich., has both musically-trained and amateur members. The blend means that you get something that’s somewhere between nasal college punk and up-tempo, ambient elegance. On their website, the band calls their live performances “wildly raw and youthful, resembling some sort of indie marching band gone terribly wrong.”

Braille will also be opening. This group hails from Chicago, Ill., and they are equally ambient and musically aware but moan a little more than Anathallo.

Saturday’s Gardner show might be slow and serious, but Saxon Shore, along with Anathallo and Braille, has the potential to make something really beautiful out of it.

—reviewed by Emilia Garvey