Upon its release, Adventures in Modern Recording faced mixed reviews from music critics and performed poorly commercially in the United Kingdom, failing to make it on the UK Albums Chart.

On the day studio sessions for Adventures in Modern Recording were to begin, the Buggles' keyboardist Geoff Downes left to form the English rock band Asia.

[7] While Adventures in Modern Recording was mostly a Horn solo project, Downes was still involved in the writing and production of "Vermillion Sands", "I Am a Camera" and "Lenny" (where he also handled the drum programming) and played keyboards on "Beatnik".

[9][10][11] It is stylistically and sonically diverse,[9][10][12] as heard in "Vermillion Sands" alone; compared by Chris Roberts of BBC Music to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody",[12] the song consists of "electro-pop, harmony vocals, key signature changes, incongruous blasts of synthetic trumpet and boogie woogie piano and swing", described Mojo's David Buckley.

[17][18][19] Tim de Lisle of Smash Hits praised Horn's production and the first five tracks for having "enough strong tunes, witty ideas and funky noises", but generally found the album "much less than the sum of the parts, and Side Two deteriorates into tedious Yes-style pomposity".

[18] A reviewer from The Morning Call also made an unflattering Yes comparison towards some of the songs, like "Beatnik"; he wrote that while it has the "melancholic frenzy" of the duo's biggest hit "Video Killed The Radio Star", it also has the same Yes-style mixture of "pretentious, meaningless lyrics" and "soaring, grandiose harmonics".

[19] Opined Mike Gardner in Record Mirror, "Instead of an invigorating glimpse into their world of hi-sci techno wizardry, we get a weedy piece of whimsy.

"[20] A Record Mirror review by Sunie Fletcher of the title track negatively compared it to the "yukky strain of studiedly bouncy, vacuous pop" of "Video Killed the Radio Star".

[12] Stannard called its songwriting "vastly more sophisticated and satisfying" than The Age of Plastic,[13] while The Bolton News journalist Martin Hutchinson highlighted Horn's vocals.

[28][29][30] However, Adventures in Modern Recording fared better in North America and continental Europe, particularly France, the Netherlands and the US where it was the Buggles' only entry on the country's official Billboard 200 chart, peaking at number 161.