Instrumental Tourist received generally favorable reviews from critics, with an aggregate score of 73 out of 100 on
Metacritic.
AllMusic wrote that "Lopatin and Hecker take the sounds in their intentionally limited palette to places they may never have been expected to go, and the journey is intriguing and frequently lovely."
The Observer wrote that "the strength of this record comes from their disregard for coherence and disinterest in finding common ground. Their warring improvisations are intriguing, unsettling and often exquisite." In a less positive review,
XLR8R wrote that "despite scattered flashes of brilliance, too often it's an album that feels unambitious, as though it's content to dwell in the middle ground where the two producers' back catalogs intersect rather than forge something new."
Uncut wrote that "as sublime as much of
Instrumental Tourist is, it rarely fulfills that promise of
improvisation, of a real sonic engagement or play, and struggles to exceed the sum of its parts." ==Track list==