What financial gain Fire Records expect from putting out an extended version of the third album by AC Acoustics, beloved by Peel but not that many others, ten years on is moot, but at least it allows us to rediscover a band who in their own sphere defined the boundaries of ‘thereabouts’. Around Understanding Music‘s first release in 2000 there were plenty of young British bands who in their assorted ways learned from the grunge fallout but understood that it needed something other, louder and messier – Seafood, the Llama Farmers, Cay, early Idlewild.

What AC Acoustics added was a measure of control amid a guitar maelstrom, at a time when shoegazing was by and large still a critical dirty word. Factor in Paul Campion’s voice, tensely wound while still somehow vague enough to make the most obtuse references sound like mantras, and we find an album that is at once introspective while laced with mystery and often blasted with shaped guitar noise.

Yes, there are what could be termed melodic centrepieces, a couple of them singles at the time, but you wouldn’t mistake them for radio friendly unit shifters. ‘She Kills For Kicks’ could have been a crossover attempt with ambitions at cultured anthemry were it not set in “a seaside town where her body was found”, that opening line’s unsettling air developed through synth string stabs and insistent build, sounding more paranoid as it goes on. The ghost of Ride is busy making its presence felt in ‘Like Ribbons’, while ‘Crush’, instantly recognisable Brian Molko backing vocals (ah, 2000) inclusive, goes further and puts a foreshortened chorus exactly where the tentative menace of the verses crashes headlong into a wall of distortion, leaving the big hook attempting to poke its head through. That ghost of Kevin Shields’ sonic lift-off really looms large on the six minute centrepiece ‘Dry Salvage (God Knows My Name)’, seemingly hanging suspended waiting for a resolution that never comes amid sampled voices cultivating an air of mystery.

Not that shoegazing is by any means the only influence at work. The circular stanzas and surging backing of ‘B2′ are reminiscent of dEUS’ retooling of avant-rock, as, oddly, opening ‘Luke One’ seems to prefigure what they’ve sounded like latterly. ‘Flies’ plays with Warp-esque electronica overlaid with a cryptic storytelling monologue; ‘Chinese Summer’ could have just about fit into Snow Patrol’s Final Straw, when they were still comfortable adding a level of dissonance into their reaching for the arena gold, so much so Campion even sounds more than a tad like Gary Lightbody. Even more glaringly, the woody percussion, electronic backing and delicate chiming riff tying down ‘Arcane Action Man’ come dangerously close to what would become known as folktronica. Imagine what that would have ended up like with a few more pedals.

Too much of a good, eclectic thing, even if it sounds like it could have been a new release with its nods to blurry noise and pulling melodicity apart – ‘Lemon’ threatens to invent Secret Machines a few years too early – does wind up outstaying its welcome. Seventy minutes of this sort of thing is more than enough, especially when ‘Knot Of Knots Of Which There Is No Untying’ takes more than six minutes to go nowhere. All the same, by the time the eight minute closer ‘Walter Strains’ arrives to clear up everything that’s gone before, dark suggestions amid pitching and seething guitars before building to a cathartic skyscraping close, you do wonder how everyone missed this at the time. What Understanding Music understands is that having the noise on top is all very well but it’s the subtleties and sharp crevices underneath that make it what it is.