Eddie Prévost

Collider is a record of Eddie Prévost alone at the drum kit, playing the kind of long, open drum solo that his work with AMM and his weekly improvisation workshop rarely allows. Recorded in concert when he was close to seventy, it follows three earlier solo albums on Matchless, Loci of Change, Material Consequences and Entelechy. This one sits much nearer to the jazz drummers he has always admired. The subtitle, Or, whose drum is it, anyway?, points to the question his booklet essay takes up.

The concert took place at the Network Theatre in London on 6 February 2012, and the disc holds three long pieces. Sticking it runs to almost twenty-six minutes and Sticking it too to over thirty-two, both played with sticks, while Hands, brush, hands is a quieter piece of about fourteen minutes in between. Writing in The Squid's Ear, Brian Olewnick heard the opener centred on the snare, light and nimble, and the closer rolling across the tom-toms in a way that recalls Max Roach without copying him. He noted that Prévost keeps varying tempo, dynamics and tone without forcing dramatic climaxes, so the music stays at a steady simmer. In the middle piece rhythm and texture become hard to separate. In the notes Prévost names Roach, Elvin Jones and Art Blakey among the drummers he admires. The essay also considers his position as a white musician in an art form created largely by Black musicians. John Eyles recalled in All About Jazz that Prévost was known as the Art Blakey of Brixton in the 1960s. He called the album "essential listening for anyone with even a passing interest in Eddie Prévost" (2022). Olewnick, in 2023, found it "an excellent release from one of the finest percussionists around".

Published by Matchless Recordings in 2022 as MRCD 107, on CD with a booklet essay that Prévost presents as an additional chapter to his book An Uncommon Music for the Common Man.