'It's remarkable, really, how excellent and fresh the music sounds. This is a full-flight demonstration of the complexities and rewards available to good players in 1974. The key figure in the group is probably John Stevens. He uses a kit of very small drums and cymbals and a few percussive extras, and his playing is consistently sparse and ingenious. It's old hat to talk about percussionists 'colouring' the character of a group, but that is how Stevens works - he doesn't keep time, he doesn't keep anything. He barely even drums. There are beautiful moments towards the end of Thirty-Five Minutes where he picks up the cornet and the five players slide into a drone passage that's like an extended series of codas. Of the others, Bailey is surely more docile and accommodating than he would be now, Carter is oblique and mysterious, Parker and Watts are like awkward twins, one merry when the other is quiet but both of the same stripe.' Richard Cook, The Wire