 "Perfect Sound Forever" described "Affenstunde" as "a landmark electronic album" that "also doesn't have the timeless quality of many of their later works".Julian Cope described it as "a debut album of incredible sounds and sensations that were unlike anything prior to its existence".David Stubbs described the album as sounding "otherworldly, beguiling, perhaps precisely because of its 'datedness', its raw technological naïveté".