“Bloland’s lushly caustic music is at its most original and satisfying when it involves electronics, as in this disc’s thumping, crunchy opening track, ‘Solis-EA.’”

“In ‘Wood Machine Music,’ a string quartet, clarinet, percussion and electronics create a ripping, roaring soundscape, like the middle of an earthquake…”

Zachary Woolfe review of Chamber Industrial album, New York Times, May 20, 2015 [ Read More ]

“I found his lush, caustic music irresistible…”

Zachary Woolfe follow up review of Chamber Industrial album, New York Times, May 27, 2015 [ Read More ]

“Per Bloland’s ‘Pedr Solis,’ given its premiere staging on Friday by Guerilla Opera, hit a sweet spot.”

About Ignis’ aria: “A long aria — unaccompanied except for Dodson occasionally singing into a snare drum, rasping in synergy — was a vivid meditation.”

“Bloland’s is music of deliberate and often compelling abrasion…”

Matthew Guerrieri review of the opera Pedr Solis, Boston Globe, May 17, 2015 [ Read More ]

“the production by Guerilla Opera proved to have as much sex, violence, special effects, blood and guts, and dead bodies at the end as anything by Richard Strauss.”

“Equally forceful was Bloland’s scoring for booming electronics and live musicians…. Intense acoustical effects of instruments sliding in and out of unison mirrored the characters’ emotions, and the electronic rumble and hiss evoked the chaos outside the plywood walls as the unruly mob, aka Loki’s followers, rose in rebellion against authority.”

David Wright review of opera Pedr Solis, Boston Classical Review, May 16, 2015 [ Read More ]

“it was obvious that Bloland's The Twilight of Our Minds fit the bill as an engaging work that excited the audience.”

“Scored for a large ensemble supplemented by a laptop computer, performed in real time by an operator triggering various sound and text files, Twilight ignited passages from Albert Camus' still timely Plague to incandescent effect.”

Mark Alburger review of The Twilight of Our Minds as performed by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Classical Voice, April 11, 2006

“a formidable cello solo, given acute, theatrical intensity by Benjamin Schwartz, shifted the piece into high gear, and the exotic sounds became the flow... The ending, and the evening, dissolved into a bewitching, starry cache of ghostly magnetic resonances.”

Matthew Guerrieri review of SICPP performance of “Negative Mirror,” Boston Globe, June 21, 2007 [ Read More ]

“Something brittle and steel, something tender and just-warm flesh, something in the borderlands between something living and something inert. Gripping and vulnerable all at once, Per Bloland’s five works on the Tzadik-released Chamber Industrial push forward into and recede from some hybridized consciousness.”

“Likely the most successful work and performance on the album, Wood Machine Music is chock full of shrieks, subterranean caterwauling, and perhaps what the soul of a swarm of mason bees made of rebar sounds like…”

About Wood Machine Music:

“The work takes some ghostly turns and is fabulously physical and visceral, with sound objects descending, flying out, rolling as though millions of marbles are chasing Sisyphus down a hill.”

Tom Dempster review of Chamber Industrial album, SEAMUS Newsletter, Summer 2016 [ Read More ]