68 Million Shades...

The album was produced by the duo, John Coxon and Ashley Wales.^[6] They recorded from Monday to Friday, mostly from 11 in the morning until 6 in the evening.^[7] The duo felt that they complemented each other in the studio, with Wales the more easygoing of the two.^[7] They strove to create an album interesting enough to be enjoyed at home, divorced from nightlife and stimulants; they found that they kept adding musical elements to any attempt at a "regular" dance track.^[8][9] Coxon and Wales considered Ennio Morricone and Brian Eno to be among their primary influences.^[10] The duo produced a disc of remixes of the album, Versions.^[11]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[12]
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution	[13]
Robert Christgau	A[14]
Los Angeles Times	[15]

The Guardian noted that "Spring Heel Jack are routinely described in the music press as studio geniuses, but this sleekly produced masterwork suggests that a state-of-the-art studio has booted out the mere humans and set its own controls for the heart of the sun."^[16] Robert Christgau called the album "prog jungle," writing that Wales and Coxon "recontextualize drum 'n' bass's redolent lingo—its triple-time superdrum pitta-pat, its impossible deep tremblors that modulate whole power plants in repose—by subsuming densely frenetic techno cum dancehall in a witting synthesis of electronic composition and another of Wales's passions, On the Corner-era Miles Davis."^[14] The New York Times said that the duo "merges strings and horns that sound as if they come from movie soundtracks with a beat that can fluidly change from a rapid-fire drum-machine roll to a conga rhythm."^[17]

Entertainment Weekly concluded that "the record has moments of airy, disquieting tranquility... But it could double as Muzak for a department store’s Gen-X section."^[18] The Atlanta Journal-Constitution determined that Spring Heel Jack "is equally an inheritor of punk's do-it-yourself aesthetic and 1950s 'exotica' auteur Les Baxter's distinctly mondo notions about mood music."^[13] Rolling Stone stated: "Surrounding their break beats with a reverberating drone, Spring Heel sample sweeping strings, elastic saxophone, sitar, car horns, steel guitar, piano and trumpet, as well as cryptic, treated sounds, into a reverberating clamor that is equally tuneful and enigmatic."^[19] Spin included 68 Million Shades... on its list of "The 10 Best Albums You Didn't Hear in '96".^[20]

AllMusic wrote that the album "continues the duo's dense, dub-inspired take on jungle."^[12]