Despite receiving little airplay in the United Kingdom, "Setting Sun" sold 99,000 copies during its first week of release and debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart in October 1996.

"[9] Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger contextualised the collaboration: "The Chemical Brothers had just supported Oasis at Knebworth, and like that band they were tied up with Britpop but also not completely of it.

But by now Britpop is falling apart in a bloody-nosed mess – 'Setting Sun' the perfect soundtrack, really – and the Chemical Brothers' main context is coming to the fore: big beat.

"[9] Taylor said that "Anything that gives Chris Evans a nasty shock has to be regarded as a good thing", while Tom Rowlands of the duo told NME that "It takes a lot of hard work to get a record featuring Noel Gallagher pulled from daytime Radio 1.

"[11] The Daily Telegraph writer Sheryl Garratt writes that although it became the Chemical Brothers' first UK number one single, "it stayed in the top slot for only a week.

[12] Turner writes: "It was – and remains – utterly uncompromised, a cyclone of a track that sat as a beacon of strangeness at the top of the UK Singles Chart between a jaunty one-hit wonder (Deep Blue Something's 'Breakfast at Tiffany's') and a mawkish cover version (Boyzone's take on Bee Gees' 'Words').

He felt that songs like "Setting Sun" "come on like mini-amusement parks, offering so many sonic thrills that you can't help but want to ride the groove again.

"[14] Caroline Sullivan from The Guardian gave it a top score of five out of five and named it Single of the Week, writing, "The Brothers' disjointed breakbeats, sirens and trapped-in-a-lift ambiance are glorious foils for Gallagher, who seems to be having an out-of-body experience.

"Setting Sun" is the beat from The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" cranked up and flooded with the messiest noise in techno, with Noel's usual dippy doggerel scribbled through the middle.

The whole thing takes the slip road into beat-less Babel a couple of times to catch its breath before diving right back into the mêlée, riotous and rejuvenated.

According to Spin writer Ed Weisbard, MTV cited the "Setting Sun" video as the inspiration for announcing "a format shift away from alternative rock and toward electronica".

[25] Marc Hogan wrote of the track in the Pitchfork list: "With rave sirens, screeching guitars, and a buzzing midsection where the bottom drops out like you're going over a dip on the freeway, 'Setting Sun' summons up the Fab Four's trailblazing spirit better than Oasis ever could alone-- though Noel Gallagher's hallucinatory vocal sure helps.

"[21] Ewing calls it "the noisiest No.1 of the 90s and the best record of [Gallagher's] career", adding that the singer's lyrics "are just flotsam to be sucked under by the raging spume of drum crash, siren and divebomb electro-howl the Brothers conjure up.

"[19] That same year, Andy Gill of Q described the Chemical Brothers as "genre matchmakers who've arguably done more than anyone to introduce rock fans to dance, and vice-versa — never more so than when they collaborated with Noel Gallagher on the chart-topping, screaming-dizbuster noise of 'Setting Sun'.