Axelrod composed, arranged, and produced the album while recording with session musicians such as guitarist Al Casey, bassist Carol Kaye, drummer Earl Palmer, and conductor Don Randi.

Its symphony is embellished with percussive sounds, British and Irish folk song elements, and stylistic innovations from contemporary arranger Gerald Wilson.

[4] It is a bass-driven, funky song that juxtaposes augmented sevenths strummed on an electric guitar against an acoustic piano and muted horns.

[7] In a retrospective review, AllMusic's Thom Jurek gave the album four-and-a-half out of five stars and said that Axelrod "succeeded in spades" in his search for a sound that "best exemplified not only his feelings but also the heady text he sought to sonically illustrate."

Jurek felt that his compositions were diverse, lush, and able to resemble literature by "using as much space as they do sound for dramatic and dynamic effect", and that Axelrod created original palettes for rock instrumentation through his complex use of the horn section's "various colors".

[2] Lynell George of the Los Angeles Times called it a "prescient, genre-defying" solo project,[8] and NME journalist John Mulvey viewed it as a "landmark" album.

[9] Mojo cited the album, along with Song of Innocence, as Axelrod's artistic peak and particularly praised "The Human Abstract" as "beautiful and blank", evoking "the view from Arthur Lee's castle of an endless pale blue sky and the vast deathly city beneath it.

"[10] Tom Hull was less receptive, giving the album a B grade and calling it "the sort of high schmaltz you often get with movie music, with at least one cut ('The Fly') transcending the level of dreck".

"[14] In a 2000 interview for The Wire, rapper and producer Mike Ladd spoke of the album recording "London", deeming it "crazy stuff" that deviated from the one-dimensional rhythm loops of contemporary hip hop production.