They say that good things come to those who wait.

Two years ago, when I compiled the Sunday Herald's first Top 50 Scottish Albums of the Year list, the only EP included was Excapism by Glasgow band Turning Plates. "This six-track, 27-minute release... has more epic beauty and textural richness than the vast majority of 2012's albums," I wrote at the time. Now, at last, I hold The Shouting Cave, the debut long-player from Turning Plates, in my hands. I have waited, and it is a good thing.

Turning Plates are unique on the Scottish music scene. Five multi-instrumentalists each with some level of classical training, they create post-rock soundscapes that are full of wonder, blending electrifying whispers, dramatic peaks, beautiful melodies and intricate arrangements. It's almost chamber-prog, with melodic elements that sometimes remind me of English folk music, before soaring into an emotional state that's up there with Sigur Ros. This truly is music to make the heart swell.

"Normally I don't worry too much about music genres," says Duncan Sutherland, the band's singer and main songwriter, "but when people ask us what we are, I do find it annoying that there's not just the one-stop word I can say. I guess I think of it as being more Radiohead or Bon Iver - but those are just things I like, and I don't know how much that's reflected in what we do."

When Sutherland first formed Turning Plates, it was in a more standard guitars-bass-drums format. Then cellist Jackie Baxter came in. And more was made of bass/keyboard player Jason Matthews's ability with the clarinet. Now Tom Smith adds violin and trombone and Stephen Coleman supplies drums and percussion.

That flexibility makes for radiant and expansive compositions: witness the glockenspiel and bass clarinet intro to A Hymn To Our Quickening, the four-trombone prelude to Avatar, the subtle crescendo of brass behind the falsetto voice and high strings of Falling Lives that sends a shiver down the spine. The Shouting Cave is one of the standout albums of the year, an exquisitely crafted work of art.

On top of all this, the album has a concept: it explores the effect of the internet on society, seeing it as "the purest reflection of humanity, a world built entirely of our own thoughts, emotions and desires". There are big ideas at play here, as certain songs tell individual stories within the overarching idea of the internet as a wilderness into which everyone is born before having to discover new ways of interacting.

"Falling Lives is all about someone's relationship with pornography, and Havoc is about internet trolling," Sutherland explains. "But I think the best way to engage people is with melody and beauty in the first instance and let the meaning of stuff seep in through that. Obviously it helps if the music reflects the style and the thematic material of your words. If you're talking about isolation, you want the feel of that in your music, as then it's easier to get the message of that across."

The album was recorded by Jamie Savage at Chem19 studio after the band received some funding from Creative Scotland. Forms were filled in; applications sent, refined and sent again. And now physical copies of the album have been mastered and are ready for release.

"It's been a long and emotional journey," admits Sutherland. "I think we can still improve and we've not quite found where we want to be. But maybe that's one of those things as a band that you always keep searching for and never find, and it's the searching rather than the arriving that keeps you fresh."

The Shouting Cave is self-released tomorrow and can be ordered from www.turningplates.co.uk. Turning Plates play a launch gig (with Jo Mango) at the Old Hairdresser's, Glasgow on Saturday