[3][4][5] In an article for the London Review of Books, Adam Shatz stated that the work's "austerity invites us to reflect on its subject matter: the condition of the foreigner in a new land by turns welcoming and hostile."

He wrote: "Germany had recently accepted more than a million refugees... and the generous welcome they received... was already tarnished by xenophobic hostility.

"[6] David Grundy, writing for Point of Departure, commented: "Rather than imagining that any artform... can adequately capture the entirety of the historical burdens with which he's concerned, Coursil's music instead encourages us to think of the historical absences and gaps, the absence of adequate expression for that which is excluded from the Enlightenment narratives Western society tells itself... this is a patient music that requires one to fully suspend expectations of development, progress or momentum... Coursil's music is also comfortable with a kind of marginal or peripheral claim on attention, in which the listener might be asked... to enter into a mood of contemplation in which attention may wander or focus into shards of emotional intensity."

"[7] In a review for The New York City Jazz Record, Andrey Henkin described the album as "an elusive listen, atmospheric and non-linear, introspective and abstract," and wrote: "listening to it one hears something floating and omnipresent, not tethered to grooves or emanating from speakers... we are left on our own to determine what Coursil meant: was he the stranger, a philosopher among musicians, a trumpeter among academics?

This amorphous quality extends to the music as the notes, words and electric washes move in and out of the foreground.