Phantom Brickworks has a very spacious structure that uses lots of reverberation, delay, and elements of long sustain in the composition: XLR8R analyzed it has a "widescreen vibe," where the tracks have "patient, sometimes nearly imperceptible cycles of accretion and subsidence" and, as a result, "feel as much like landscapes as they do music." On each track, hazy filtering, field recordings, and tape hiss are present to either drown out or undermine the importance of the main loop.Cook, Fred (7 November 2017). "Bibio ‘Phantom Brickworks’". Gigsoup. Retrieved 20 February 2018. As Clash magazine noted, "the material on Phantom Brickworks writes its own rules [of ambient music] as it progresses, with Bibio uncovering fresh techniques simply through the act of performance." Writer Philippa Nicole Barr states that in achieving a haunting vibe, the music's rhythmic structure follows a sort-of offbeat pattern that "conveys that sense of the uncanny – slowing the listener down to a meditative state, so that they can begin to imagine the many phantoms all around them."
