Sam Bland is a sonic artist, composer and workshop leader, interested in the potential of sound art to investigate environments and social history. He is a post-graduate from the University of Birmingham, where he completed an MA in Composition. His work often combines interviews, field and archive recordings and electronics, to produce dense and politically engaged soundscapes.

 

His current sonic art research has been in investigating the sound of nostalgia, through the excavation of personal archival recordings. His recent project, 66 Montclaire, was selected for the Daegu International Computer Music Festival. In November 2022, Sam traveled to South Korea to present the work, along with a talk. The work was also performed at the 30th anniversary of BEAST, at the Elgar Concert Hall in Birmingham (2022) and Everyday is Spatial Conference in Cheltenham (2023).  Currently Sam is working on Arts Council funded (DYCP) creative research project, exploring the liminal space between sonic art and experimental music practice. This will culminate in the writing of an EP of selected works.

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Community engagement is another integral part of Sam's practice. He has been commissioned by the Croydon Art Store (2019) and Croydon Council (2019) to run young artist workshops on Sound Art, as well producing two pieces for the organisations. Through the UK lockdown he ran two successful community projects over Zoom with Pembroke Academy of Music (2020/21) and We Are All Bats listening channel (2021). Both these projects explored group composition, sound art and social history through regular online sessions with mixed ability groups of young people and adults. 

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Sam is also an an active live performer, this semi-improvised practice combines live analogue radio, synthesiser and piano. He has played at a number of venues around the UK with this project, including: Centrala and Artefact in Birmingham (2022/23), The George and North London Tavern in London (2021/23) and the Black Prince in Northampton (2023). With upcoming performances at Pan Pan in Birmingham and Boomtown Festival, Winchester.

 

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