Sleep received wide acclaim from contemporary music critics. At
Metacritic, which assigns a
normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an
average score of 79, based on 7 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Jon Falcone of
Drowned in Sound gave the album a very positive review, stating, "
Sleep implores you for companionship and bleeds into itself as it bleeds into the listener. Typing while the fizz of ‘
Never Fade Into Nothingness’ plays makes transforms Word documents in an epic dance of black pixels on white light, binary marks scratching into a too-bright glassy reflection. Walking while the echo-drenched monastic vocals of ‘
Non-Eternal’ exposes that the world we occupy is haunted is exhilarating and avoiding awkward work colleagues as ‘
If You Came This Way’ patters out its motif, that dangles held violin notes over electronic burbles, is to experience the sound of solace itself." Grayson Haver Currin of
Pitchfork gave the album a positive review, stating, "At its best,
Sleep feels like compositionally rigorous new age music. It’s a place in which you can settle for a while, with or without a pillow, and emerge only when you are ready to rejoin the restive world." Currin was also slightly critical of the release, stating, "
Sleep, then, is simply too didactic as a name. It’s a command that tells us how to enjoy something that clearly has other uses. That handle, combined with Richter’s conceit, has turned the record into a kind of clickbait story, too, which seems entirely antithetical to Richter’s point." ==Commercial performance==