In Gianfranco Rosi’s portrait of Naples, Sotto le Nuvole, the ground shakes periodically. Between Mount Vesuvius and the Tyrrhenian Sea, the fumaroles of the Phlegraean Fields hiss volcanic gas and steam. Below the sleeping volcano, modern day Naples emerges in black and white and fills with voices, with lives. From the traces of history and the concerns of the present, Rosi documents a city immersed in its continuous past, with Daniel Blumberg’s minimal soundscape hovering in a sonic space between liquid and air. Tasked with creating a soundscape that would suspend space within Rosi’s film, Blumberg called upon the extended technique of saxophonists Seymour Wright and John Butcher to create a gossamer fabric of traces and sounds abstracted from their instruments. Having transitioned from theoretical physics to the saxophone, John Butcher has always deeply considered space in the context of his playing. His concerns are with flow, density and how the saxophone is situated in the living world. Zeroing in on the core sonic properties of the mechanical and acoustic components of the saxophone, Seymour Wright has integrated its every breath, reed vibration, keypad clatter and hissed microtone of his alto into his own, unique improvisational language. In his work with these two seminal players, Blumberg makes his most concentrated soundtrack to date - reinforcing the film's sense of overlapping time and space, and pushing at the limits of experimentation. Initially recorded in Daniel’s flat in London, Butcher and Wright centre themselves around long, consistent tones, so soft that it seems breath is being gently pulled from the saxophone's bell by an invisible hand. Blumberg himself adds haunting bass harmonica, and recordings of Wright’s launeddas - a traditional and ancient triple pipe polyphonic reed instrument from Sardinia, Italy. Blumberg then travelled to the volcanic region of Baia, next to Pompeii. Once a flourishing classical Roman city loved by Nero, Baia slowly sank under hydrothermal pressure, leaving the city in a kind of geological purgatory. Using specialised geophones and hydrophones, Blumberg took those initial recordings and amplified them underwater, sending them calling out across the ruins of Baia’s mosaics, Nymphaeum statues and villas. “It was important to me that the music was whispered in the same landscape that Gianfranco has worked for the past three years, so that you can hear the volcanic air gulping, the lapping of the waves, the steam and bubbles popping against John and Seymour’s saxophone breaths – an echo from a suspended time.” What emerges is deeply melancholic, tender, subtle and right at the edges of audio technology. Submerged in an aquarian mausoleum, the mysterious vibrations of the saxophone and its bell become an echo of an echo, wading from the future into the past.

It features seven solos, one by each artist who played on Minus: Daniel Blumberg, Terry Day, Ute Kanngiesser, Billy Steiger, Tom Wheatley, Jim White and Seymour Wright. Daniel Blumberg’s Minus is an astonishing work; one that weds an improvisational, free-music ethos to the rawest emotional songwriting, rooted deep in the personal turmoil Blumberg experienced whilst making the record. Minus is an album about breakdowns: relationship breakdowns, mental and physical breakdowns, breakdowns in communication, and the breaking down of received methods and practices. And situated at the broken-down heart of the record lies a pathological preoccupation with a breakdown of trust. But out of all this, and through the arteries of the album’s seven tracks, pulses a sense of growing fortitude and an almost mantra-like effort to create a way back into the world. Key refrains sound like the fevered incantations of a soul willing itself to recover, to find its voice again, and to resurrect the broken-down self.

Node Records is pleased to announce the release of London-based composer and visual artist Daniel Blumberg’s debut feature film score for the critically acclaimed motion picture The World to Come. The soundtrack is availablenow on all streaming platforms. Listen here. The score incorporates the use of farm bells, clarinets, strings and ethereal vocals to capture the rural atmosphere that Blumberg experienced while visiting the set in Romania. The soundtrack also features the original song The World to Come, performed by singer-songwriter Josephine Foster. For the recording sessions, Blumberg enlisted the talents of an ensemble of radical, internationally revered musicians, including Peter Brötzmann (bass clarinet), Ute Kanngiesser (cello), Steve Noble (cowbells), Yoni Silver (clarinet), Billy Steiger (violin), Alex Ward (clarinet) and Tom Wheatley (double bass). The score was co-produced with world-renowned producer Peter Walsh (Scott Walker); The World to Come is Blumberg’s entry into feature-length film scoring. “It was a huge challenge to retain the unique qualities of improvised music with the structure of cinema, but that friction is something that excited me about working in this context,” says Blumberg.