“Getting familiar with Cole Blu was a transformative experience. In an industry where people tend to standardize each other, following trends, cliché and commercial tropes, the American creative seems set on a very unique path, building a personal sonic universe that’s the perfect fit for the project’s complex and enlightened lyricism.” - mesmerized.io, on Torso.

“With this epic solo saxophone composition Cole Blouin has woven a veritable catalog of extended techniques into a work of steadily increasing complexity and intensity, offering an important new addition to a still-too-scant saxophone literature in contemporary classical music. Soprano saxophonist Thomas Giles articulates an assortment of building blocks at the outset, moving patiently through a variety of motifs separated by gaps of silence. Using a spiral structure, the piece evolves and expands over its exquisite first 30 minutes.

It’s impossible to miss the influence of Evan Parker, particularly in the rigorous use of circular breathing and spectral multiphonics, but Blouin’s score requires that Giles keep moving through different approaches, whether upper register glissando, sounds shaded by static from a radio, or vibrato-soaked flurries. As the work proceeds these various ideas accrue depth, volume, and aggression. It’s as if Giles opens the piece testing out an obstacle course, only to begin racing through it at greater and greater speeds, taking wider arcs as it accelerates. But velocity doesn’t diminish the precision here, as the saxophonist nails the various details with unflinching exactitude. The final 10 minutes of Mundiglossia move away from the outwardly radiating structure and toward contemplation, as Giles seems to look back upon and reflect on the sonic edifice he’s just constructed.” - Peter Margasak, Best of Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp, August 2023; for Bandcamp.com (alongside work by Brian Eno, Carl Stone, Arnold Dreyblatt), on Mundiglossia.