At the risk of oversimplifying, I’ll venture this overview: its almost as if the album was a chronological record of attempts at the material. It seems to improve and improve as it progresses. It starts off rather noisily with the first track, without becoming “Noise” as such: soaring vocal harangues and cascades of balloons being let down, embedded in a mass of abrasion. The second piece - they are all untitled - is a rather short drone; at less than two minutes, its over before it starts. Like the preceding track, it too aims at “noise” conventions, with Chen shrieking at the top of her lungs and Wooley blazing on his horn. The overall effect is, however, somewhat underwhelming and forced.

It’s with the third piece, that the album begins to open up. Here, the “noisiness” of the previous tracks is still in evidence, but the sense of compression and clutter has dissipated. Its essentially another drone, but a more forceful one; recalling equally the Residents and Biota/Mnemonists. It achieves the sense of abrasive power that the album had been searching for, up until this point. With the source material and modus operandi apparently resolved, its left to the last two tracks on “NCAT” to really dazzle the ears. The first begins with murmured voices and sounds which threaten to disappear, before adding tape work and reverberating, low-end shunts; all of which is carried against a grainy backdrop of ambient police sirens. The vocals become increasingly processed, but there’s still a prevailing sense of restraint, of freedom; as if the sounds were just allowed to fall where they wished. Its somewhat akin to a slightly academic, sombre Chocolate Monk release. This restraint carries over into the last track, which has noisy outbursts, but a much greater sense of composition and colour than the earliest pieces. Here, the sounds and elements truly breathe, and become the construction that the album had threatened all along. Graced with a much better sense of pace, we find: drones akin to throat singing - coupled with breathy hisses, cellos turned into helicopter blades or flies and vocals from the crypt. The very end of the piece is properly apocalyptic, carrying dread and true abrasion whilst also foregrounding the electro-acoustic nature of the composition. Truly impressive stuff.

For me, as I’ve said above, the album seems to grow stronger as it progresses - which is a good thing, since the last two pieces are also the longer. The initial tracks seem a little forced, like they’re chasing something; they don’t fully convince my ears. There’s perhaps an awkward middle ground between the “base” acoustic sounds and their processed cousins - some of the more electronic sounding elements are rather mundane, with complex acoustic sounds reduced to somewhat bland electronic squeals. This seems to disappear as the album continues, and the later tracks have a greater sense of colour and composition. The second half of the album has a restraint that the first doesn’t, yet this lack of restraint (in the first half) doesn’t tip over into any kind of wonderful skree or chaos. Despite these lesser moments, though, this is still undoubtedly a recommended album.