As
Exclaim! critic Daniel Sylvester summarized
Black Origami, "it's earthy and futuristic, complex and linear, dance-y and a total mind-fuck." The album, as a result, is more spacious than previous Jlin records, to the point where "tracks like the rattling "Enigma" or the glittery splash of "Carbon 7" feel like they should be choreographed with fluid and balletic steps instead of the rapid movements of footwork and juke, even if the rhythms remain at the same BPM as ever," wrote
Consequence of Sounds Robert Ham. In fact, the drums and percussion in the album's original mix sounded so aggressive that
Planet Mu instructed the mastering engineer to tone down the harshness of the sound. particularly of
Eastern music. They range from marching-band-style drums ("Hatshepsut") to
Bollywood percussion ("Kyanite") to American
hip-hop drums ("Never Created, Never Destroyed").
AllMusic called the album "fluid and delicate" for a footwork record, also analyzing it is "informed by ballet and contemporary dance in addition to more club-oriented dance styles." Writer Andrew Nosnitsky wrote that
Black Origami is several genres "and none of them at once. It’s a rhythm-spanning collection of contradictions and colliding worlds—the intensity of social music refracted through an introverted mind, the physical converted into digital and back again, the past told through
future music and vice versa—all making the case that rhythm is too infinite, too forceful to be reduced to mere utilitarian functions." . Journalist Ben Cardew found
Black Origami akin to the 1990s works of
Photek,
Squarepusher, and
Aphex Twin, where it takes "the rhythmic intensity of
drum and bass and squeeze[s] and contort[s] it into fascinating
new shapes."
Spin also compared it to the 1990s music of Aphex Twin for its "determination to plumb the horizontal possibilities of dance music." While most of the tracks are very percussion-heavy, the album also occasionally veers into more
ambient pieces like "Calcination". It also features several elements of
witch house. ==Release and promotion==