Philip Blackburn is a brilliant composer, comfortable in diverse forms and styles. …the result is splendid, the nineteen minutes of "Ordo" being halfway between Arvo Pärt and medieval chants, … "The Song of the Earth", performed by Patti Cudd on vibraphone, accompanied by recordings of Aeolian harps designed by the composer, is a magical moment of ecstatic, radiant delicacy, …With "The Sound of a Going in the Tops of the Mulberry Trees", we indeed approach new chamber music. The No Exit New Music Ensemble masterfully performs this suave, danceable, syncopated piece, on the edge between pure contemporary and passages on the edge of jazz. Follows the Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli on the aerial and gripping composition "Lilacs and Lightning", a luminous masterpiece punctuated by the "Virtual Rhythmicon. .. "Albi", an elegiac and mysterious string quartet, of poignant beauty, in homage to Albi Rosenthal (1914 - 2004), seller of old books who did much to safeguard capital musical archives of the 20th century (those of Anton Webern or Igor Stravinsky for example)… The Silver Swan (1612) sung by soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw and a strange symphony for eight foghorns by ships: it's one of the great successes of the album, which reminds me of compositions by Ingram Marshall or even Alvin Curran… An abundant, exciting, demanding, sometimes confusing double album, but which holds dazzling surprises.” – Dionys, Inactuelles

“It is a contemporary New Music that unfolds naturally, organically, without some marked self-conscious newness. I've now listened to this program many times and it still seems fresh and naturally, emphatically ethereal, supportive and eventful in a gradualist way. Bravo! Listen to this one without fail if you like a bit of the Universe in your musical kingdoms! Strongly recommended. Blackburn is a vital force in the music today.” - Grego Edwards, Gapplegate New Music

“How to account for such music, such brilliance, such luxuriance? And of such gravity: it lifts, deposits, vaporizes…  An experience of listening, immersion, reunion with the essential. A fabulous sound journey!” - Inactuelles.com

“…meticulously crafted with purpose, but also appeals to the listener's imagination. Somewhere between abstract ambient and pure musical beauty, Blackburn finds his musical way… the music is downright fascinating.” - Opduvel.com

“A record made for deprivation tank experiences!…if this is the new direction in contemporary classical music, fans are going to have to do some running to catch up. .. Far out man!” - Chris Spector, Midwest Record, 2021

“…bleak, tectonically and ineluctably shifting triptych…the high point of the composer’s career so far...Blackburn is sort of the shadow image of Brian Eno – his enveloping, often darkly majestic electroacoustic soundscapes tend to whoosh and resonate in the lows, sometimes with provocative samples…” — delarue, New York Music Daily, October 9, 2017

“…typified by an oneiric temperament which belies the painstaking assemblage of constituents that characterizes them ... The result is comparable to a protracted hallucination, distinguishable traces emerging from the indefinite awareness of a somewhat mystical inscrutability." — Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

“…impressive work that blurs the lines between composition, sampling, ambiance, and performance.” — Steve Holtje, The Big Takeover

“apocalyptic collisions of material with intimate vocal refrains and meticulously organized instrumental interludes." — Philip Clark, The Wire

"[A] wild journey through the dreamscape of a hyperimaginative chorister... All of this music confirms Blackburn as a startlingly original voice, one that encompasses all periods of music history in a uniquely engaging vision." — Marc Medwin, Signal to Noise

“[The] trippy, occasionally apocalyptic [Ghostly Psalms] knocks reality sideways. Intimate vocal soliloquies wrestle free from walls of sustained choral and string drones that morph and change with the (anti)logic of a dream’s unruly narrative.” — Philip Clark, Gramophone

“…a phantasmagoric nightmare-scape to combine in a sonically diverse and transportive record.” — Doyle Armbrust, Best Opera & Classical Recordings 2012, Time Out Chicago

“…a pure exercise in phonographic psychogeography” — Modulate New Sounds

“Blackburn creates aural stories though the source of their content and meaning are left open to the imagination and as such Music of Shadows needs to be experienced to appreciate its unique beauty. — Karl Ackerman, AllAbout Jazz

“Steampunk meets classical in an experimental explosion for the ears on this outing. And now you have a better understanding of what "Metal Machine Music" could have been if it was more than Lou Reed telling RCA to bugger off. — Midwest Record

“This is a disc to take you literally “away.” If you’re a fan of ambient (Eno, Roach, Köner, Cluster) with heft, this is a must.” — Mark Keresman, Icon Magazine

“…floated like clouds, to beautiful yet slightly spooky effect… Blackburn is one of the best composers exploring this style.” — Big Takeover

“Philip Blackburn gives us a ravishingly sonic modern adventure that is both highly inventive and thoroughgoingly striking in its sound design. These are works to get inside of, to experience transformatively, to change as the music itself changes. It is something not to be missed.” — Classical Modern Music

"The strange and atmospheric, silvery dark musics and moods of Philip Blackburn manage to intrigue and entrance." – Critic-at-Large

“Blackburn’s edgy, maximum-volume writing.”[AIR: Air, Canary, New Ground] — Cleveland Classical