Produced by Eno and Rhett Davies, it features contributions from a small core of musicians, including Robert Fripp (electric guitar), Phil Collins (drums), Percy Jones (fretless bass), and Rod Melvin (piano).

Contemporary reception has been similarly positive; several publications, including Rolling Stone, NME and Pitchfork, have named the album among the greatest of the 1970s and of all time.

Guitarist Robert Fripp, who had worked with Eno on (No Pussyfooting) and Here Come the Warm Jets, performed the solo on "St. Elmo's Fire".

[5] Critic Ian Wade of The Quietus noted that the album is "much calmer" than Eno's previous work, "smoothed into a new pastoral ambient pop".

[10] According to eMusic's Richard Gehr, the album's music veers from the guitar-oriented experimental rock of Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain to the synthesiser-oriented ambient minimalism of his subsequent work.

[12] According to AllMusic's Steve Huey, most of the album consists of "paced instrumentals that, while often closer to ambient music than pop, are both melodic and rhythmic".

[17] "Songs like 'The Big Ship'", writes Mike Powell, "start on A and linger, accumulating countermelodies, magnifying themes, staying the same and yet revealing new sides with every turn.

"[18][19] "In Dark Trees" and "The Big Ship" are two songs on which Eno plays all the instruments, namely the synthesizer, synthetic percussion and drum machine.

[13] To create the lyrics, Eno would later play the backing tracks singing nonsense syllables to himself, which he would then form them into actual words and phrases.

[22] The tracks that do feature lyrics are in the same free-associative style as Eno's previous albums, with a "gently whimsical and addled" sense of humour.

Charley Walters of Rolling Stone found it a "major triumph" that Eno's creative risks "so consistently pan out", and said that it is "indeed an important record—and also a brilliant one".

"[35] Lester Bangs of The Village Voice was lulled by much of the music and said that "those little pools of sound on the outskirts of silence seemed to me the logical consequence of letting the processes and technology share your conceptual burden".

Steve Huey of AllMusic called it "a universally acknowledged masterpiece" and "the perfect introduction to [Eno's] achievements even for those who find ambient music difficult to enjoy".

[40] In his review for Blender, Douglas Wolk said that the audio clarity of the remastered edition "makes it easier to pay attention to every [song's] subtle complexities".