"Performed at the Angelica Contemporary Music Festival in Bologna, Italy, and greatly benefitted by the superior recording process you may be able to hear a pin drop as the audience appears to be mesmerised by the sonics and the artists' multi-purposed course of action. Fritz Hauser is world-famous for creating solo programmes for drums and percussion, performed on a global basis, involving architecture, theatre, dance and film music. Armaroli's broad palate includes chamber jazz associations with British free jazz drummer Roger Turner and radical American guitarist Elliot Sharp, and other luminaries who reign supreme as eternal futurists."-Leo Records

"Swiss percussionist Fritz Hauser and Italian vibraphonist Sergio Armaroli emphasize their instruments' deliberate and lilting qualities plus their rhythmic functions by maneuvering between improvisation and chance music. Recorded within four months of one another these CDs testify to this delicate balance, with Angelica's two extended tracks more inclined towards free music, while Prismo's one extended and 10 much briefer tracks suggest leans towards the aleatoric. Another reason for the latter is that the duo is joined by Italian pianist Francesca Gemmo who has collaborated with Alvin Curran and Swiss cellist Martina Brodbeck, a member of the Basel-Sinfonietta. Hauser works with directors and choreographers and players like Joëlle Léandre, while Armaroli, involved with what he calls percussion concrète has played with Roger Turner among others.

Expressive echoes of repetitive vibraphone plinks and accented rattles and shuffle from the percussionist set up the live Angelica recital as the exposition judders upwards and downwards to expose the quickening theme. Yet as the narrative's well-modulated metronomic parameters are emphasized, freer interludes where Armaroli's lyrical intervention resembles Milt Jackson's balladic skill and Hauser's vehement strokes aim for Elvin Jones-like power arrive. In tandem or double counterpoint, the duo emphasizes both sides of the cadenced and chiming divide. The vibraphone's motor power allows bell-like tinkles to undulate in the air or alternately create jagged metallic scrapes. Meanwhile Hauser's versatility extends to strokes that resemble African hand drum malleability or thumping ruffs that suggest kettle drums. He works out simple patterns behind the vibist's more lyrical passages or when Armaroli turns to tough ringing, he moderates the impact with a collection of guiro-like ratcheting stokes, maracas-like shakes and a showpiece of rolled paradiddles. Reaching a swirling climax of airy metal bar twinkles mixed with reparative drum pops the piece fades with a connective and distinctive buzz. [...]"-Ken Waxman, JazzWord