All compositions were executed by Frank Zappa on the Synclavier DMS with the exception of "St. Etienne", a guitar solo excerpted from a live performance Zappa gave of "Drowning Witch" from his Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch album, during a concert in Saint-Étienne, France, on his 1982 tour.

The unreleased original Synclavier performance was done using only the unit's FM synthesis, while the recording found here was Zappa's "deluxe" arrangement featuring newer samples and timbres.

"G-Spot Tornado", assumed by Zappa to be impossible to play by humans,[citation needed] was performed by Ensemble Modern on the concert recording The Yellow Shark (1993).

David Fricke of Rolling Stone wrote that "there is nothing particularly hellish about the eight pieces on the album, though it may have been a bitch to program these densely packed parcels of subdivided rhythms and Chinese-checker themes", also remarking that "it would have been nice to hear Zappa tear up his digital soundscape here and there with a little more real-sound guitar".

[6] A retrospective review from Sam Goldner of Pitchfork called the album "a MIDI-powered vision of the uncanny and bizarre future of music", with Goldner writing that "for all its complexity, Jazz from Hell is hardly a serious listen—it squiggles and dashes about like stock music that's broken out of its cage, begging to find new ways to be played with".