The scope, ambition and sheer lunacy of These New Puritans’ new album Hidden is mind-bending. Aside from the crashing brass and Taiko drums and boys’ choir, they’ve used the sound of swords being slid out of scabbards.

The stage at Audio is small, though, and waving swords around would quickly foreshorten a promising career – so from ominous woodwind overture Time Xone through to encore Infinity Ytinifny, the great reaches of Hidden were recreated on samplers.

Although it would be magnificent to see TNP with an orchestra, this wasn’t such a bad thing. As Time Xone segued into We Want War, it became apparent they could conjure up a forcefulness to rival their album’s breadth of instrumentation.

At times the music lost its way a little, especially on Hologram and Drum Courts which work better on record. And Jack Barnett’s vocals, which are surely worth hearing word for word, were occasionally just an afterthought, a kind of sub-verbal chatter.

But niggling criticisms faded in the face of songs like Attack Music. Relentless, pounding drumming; added percussion and the striking of chains; declarative, snarled lyrics: just some of the reasons TNP really didn’t need the full works.