The Study of Touch is an album by the Django Bates' Belovèd recorded in Norway in June 2016 and released on ECM November the following year.

For them, composition and improvisation are interlocutors in a diverse and individual musical language that's meant to "slip" through the cracks whenever purpose—or desire—dictate in order to make something new, or at least new again.

In covering much of the trio's previous work, Bates allows himself the luxury of poetic license by reinterpreting pieces through an always expanding lens.

"[5][6] Financial Times' writer Mike Hobart said "The Belovèd piano trio has given Django Bates’ vivid musical imagination an added focus and internal discipline that the pyrotechnics of his orchestral projects sometimes lack.

The dramatic juxtapositions and intriguing twists remain, but now they unfold organically from within, driven by a tight-knit interplay that sustains mood and gives the music more room to breathe....