It is a segued, progressive and psychedelic trip which draws from various genres (including ambient, house, dub reggae, and hip hop) and incorporates a huge number of samples and sound effects.

[8][9] Paterson, Cauty, and Youth also performed chill-out DJ sets in Paul Oakenfold's "Land of Oz" night at the club Heaven.

[11] While Cauty released his portions of the planned album as Space and continued with his other group The KLF, Paterson moved on to his next collaboration, "Little Fluffy Clouds", in autumn 1990 with Youth.

Slant Magazine critic Sal Cinquemani called The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld a blend of "loping house beats and shades of reggae-dub with atmospheric sampledelia (film dialogue, wildlife, radio broadcasts, strings and choirs)" which defined the ambient house movement of the early 1990s.

[12] Matt Anniss of International DJ noted the album's "then unique blend of head-nodding grooves (often recycled from old hip hop and dub reggae records), horizontal ambience, and all manner of tongue-in-cheek spoken word samples.

[20] The Province labeled the album "a lengthy sound montage that endeavors to take ambient house music off of the dance floor and place it square into the third eye of those who like to bliss out with headphones".

[23] In 1999, it was included at number 82 in Spin's list of the best albums of the 1990s, with critic Richard Gehr opining that "Ultraworld is art at its most functional: It works equally well as both acid-peak booster rocket and as Prozac-ian relief from an ecstatic all-nighter.

[1] The following year, Pitchfork ranked it as the 100th best album of the 1990s, with Alex Linhardt's accompanying write-up noting that it "managed to make ambient house a perpetual 'next big thing' for the rest of the decade.

"[2] John Bush of AllMusic deemed The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld "the album that defined the ambient house movement.