Alternatively, he praised the element of control within the tracks which came to "recognizable signatures at the center of the entropic sound that seems to be coming apart in real time." The individual tracks on "Collapse" were received positively by critics, with Daryl Keating of "Exclaim!" labelling the songs as "absolute gems" and Carlos Hawthorn from "Resident Advisor" feeling that each track had "moments abstract enough to grab your attention and human enough to keep it." Writing for "NME", Tom Connick described the EP as "music for Mad Max's post-apocalyptic parties [...] a mad-hatter's box of tricks, blown up and reconstructed" and called it Aphex Twin's "most essential" release in years. "Slant Magazine's" Josh Geller was surprised with how "warm and inviting" "Collapse" sounds, whose "dense bursts of intricate glitch to expansive, ambient soundscapes" makes it feel like a "more elaborate musical journey than its mere five tracks." Critics also compared the EP to Aphex Twin's 2014 album, "Syro": Andy Cush from "Spin" found "Collapse" matching closely to the ambition and structural shifts found in the album, while Spyros Statis of "PopMatters" wrote that the EP "interchanges the "Syro" sound with a range of dissonant ideas and disfigured rhythmic patterns." Cush later acknowledged that "Collapse" is more willing to "follow those shifts to even more hazardous locales"; most songs start at "relative normalcy" before moving "growing out of control" and breaking down. "The Line of Best Fit's" Jack Bray instead compared "Collapse" to Aphex Twin's preceding EP, "Cheetah", feeling that "Collapse" was a more confident release than the latter despite lasting for a shorter period. He particularly praised the musical arrangement on the EP, which he observed was "packed with ideas" and "represents some of the finest and most varied to be found across any of [Aphex Twin's] projects". "Pitchfork"'s Philip Sherburne saw that unlike Aphex Twin's previous releases, the music on "Collapse" "moves on a wider scale" with a "real sense of violence", but manages to stay "relatively unscathed" due to Twin's mastery of "juggling precision and chaos".