The album is constructed primarily from samples and found sounds, often taken from unusual vintage sources such as second-hand children's records and answer machine cassettes, often purchased by member Chris Bailiff in jumble sales and charity shops, or inherited from his father.

Released to critical acclaim, Stop Your Nonsense was praised for its distinctively whimsical and eccentric style, with writer Simon Reynolds later crediting the album for pioneering hauntology music.

[2] In the years prior to forming Position Normal, project leader Bailiff's first group Bugger Sod dissolved, and he faced mental issues such as public anxiety, and felt focusing on making music was a therapeutic activity.

"[3] "Much of Stop Your Nonsense is steeped in a mildly menacing anglo-Dadaist atmosphere that's redolent of the English comedy tradition of cracked whimsy: writer/performers like Spike Milligan, Ivor Cutler, Viv Stanshall, Reeves & Mortimer and Chris Morris.

Other tracks bring to mind the cabinet of curiosities, Joseph Cornell's boxes of found objects and Kurt Schwitters's Merz collages and sculptural assemblages made of consumer detritus."

[1] The samples, many of which are voices, are variably either sourced from or resemble unusual vintage items, such as spoken word albums, faded BetaMax videos, time-worn answer machine cassettes and old reel-to-reel tapes.

"[10] Critics compared the album's surreal, eccentric style to Dadaism and whimsical English comedians and humorists like Ivor Cutler, Viv Stanshall, Chris Morris, Spike Milligan and Reeves & Mortimer.

[2] Andy Kellman of AllMusic named it an "Album Pick", saying "[t]he fact that the pied pipers behind Stop Your Nonsense are complete loons shouldn't hinder your ability to get lost in its juvenile buffoonery."

He commented that the album's "gleeful regression" was an 'escape hatch' into "a rumpus room of fun house mirrors -- imagine adolescent versions of Prince Paul and Aphex Twin toying with a clunky My First Sampler.

He further praised the 'glorious' attention to detail, considering the echoed instrumentation and "placidly catchy undersea melodies" to be Position Normal's signature sound, concluding that Stop Your Nonsense was the year's most original and "lovable" album.

[8] In a review for The Village Voice, Simon Reynolds positively commented that, due to the unusual sample sources, "Nonsense evokes the bygone crapness of Olde England--the provincial parochialism banished by the New Labour government's modernising policies and the twin attrition of Americanisation/Europeanisation.

"[3] In an interview with Prog, actor Paul Putner praised the album, comparing it to Negativland and describing it as "[s]amples, cut-ups, weird easy listening… it’s got this heavy rock, Sabbath-type track played on recorders.