"In Link's Around the Bend, something surprising is always lurking, from exotic tambourine sighs to quickly shared fragments, dreamy piano lines and sudden outbursts."
—Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone

"Around the Bend by John Link combines 'grooving' rhythms with a quotation from Verdi's Falstaff."
—Daniel Ender, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

"In the present new music milieu of countless oddly staffed ensembles, Flexible Music has one of the more exciting combinations of instruments and probably one of the most, um, flexible out there in terms of their ability to capture such a broad range of sounds and styles."
—Brian Sacawa, NewMusicBox

"John Link's Life Studies, Movement 1 features digital synthesis, employing Shakespearean scholar Helen Vendler reading Sonnet #65. The result is an engaging combination of regular pulsations, percussive attacks, layered washes of speech snippets, and fragmentary pitch gestures."
—Christian Carey (File Under?/Signal to Noise)

"Mendi and Keith Obadike have compiled a stunning recording containing pieces that have, at one time or another, been referred to as "spoken word," "text-sound," "sound poetry," or simply rap.... Although it is never presented in a straightforward fashion, a reading of Shakespeare's sonnet number 65 serves as the raw material for John Link's Life Studies, Movement #1, yielding a complex rhythmic surface constructed of dislocated aspirates, sibilants, and gutturals."
—John Brackett (Journal of the Society for American Music)