review 1 Ed Hazell Oppribrium

As drummer with the pioneering English free improvisation ensemble AMM, Prévost helped formulate an approach to free improvisation that is process driven, selfless, and quite distinct from jazz. His own groups, including this trio with soprano saxophonist Tom Chant and bassist John Edwards, are similarly subtle and coherent units who listen to and accommodate one another with uncommon skill. This trio can advance and recede in carefully calibrated increments, with each player finely attuned to the other — they rise and fall together like three separate objects buoyed on the tide. The collective improvisations on Touch all have a beautiful transparency in which each band member makes his presence felt without obscuring the others. The enormously talented Chant has amazing, almost microscopic control of what he does. His short bursts of sound contain clusters of minute, rapidly tongued notes, which he shapes with fine gradations of dynamics. Edwards displays great rhythmic acuity and a nice sense of space. Prévost continues to be one of the leading lights of European free improvisation, a drummer of tireless invention, who can balance sound and silence, stillness and movement, small details and overall design. This is one of Prévost's finest albums as a leader, featuring music that's full of surprises, and human warmth and vulnerability, as well as daring and tough-mindedness.

Ed Hazell
Opprobrium (NZ) No. 5 July 1998