We interviewed the composer behind The Brutalist soundtrack, whose artistic courage and radical vision is rooted in an East London cafè, and football too.

Brady Corbit’s The Brutalist has been one of the most talked-about films of the season since its debut at the Venice Biennale earlier in the summer, where it scooped three awards. The three-hour, thirty five-minute epic tale of Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) and his quest for the American Dream in the aftermath of World War II dominated the BAFTA award ceremony, and so did at Academy Awards, where it won three statuettes out of ten nominations. Among these is the award for Best Original Score, which came just over a week after the BAFTA win, further cementing how the music of Daniel Blumberg is essential in shaping the film’s austere aesthetic and deep emotional resonance.

Coming from a background distant from soundtracks, and which spanned from indie rock to thorough and radical researches on sound and acoustics matured within the creative context of East London’s venue and cultural hub Cafè Oto, Blumberg’s music for The Brutalist is a journey not only in time but also emotions and materials which mirrors both the film’s seven-year gestation and the four-decade narrative lapse in which the storyline unfolds. An 81-minute long bold interplay of discordant textures and elegiac motifs, the score navigates the tension between rigidity and intimacy, evoking the stark beauty of Brutalist architecture itself. Thanks to an almost sculptural use of sound, it framed Brady’s masterpiece on ambition, displacement, and the weight of creative vision.

Next to Blumberg, who not only acted as a producer but also played the piano, the harmonica, the keyboards and the synthesisers, was co-producer Peter Walsh, as well as a group of musicians, hand-picked by the composer himself. Among these were legendary 88-year-old British pianist John Tilbury, Erasure’s synth and drum machine player Vince Clarke, saxophonists Seymour Wright and Evan Parker, percussionist Michael Griener, double bassist Tom Wheatley and more. Many of them are the outcome of Blumberg’s decade-long love affair with Cafè Oto, where his artistic sensibility was sharpened, musical epiphany took place and, most importantly, where most of the piano parts were recorded. During his Academy Award acceptance speech Blumberg said: “The sound you hear on The Brutalist is the sound of hard working, radical musicians who have been making uncompromising music for many years.”

We reached Daniel on his birthday, just a few days after his first BAFTA and ahead of the Oscar ceremony. His work for Corbit’s The Brutalist seems to have struck a chord with the critics, just like he’s been doing with his solo albums since the debut with Minus in 2018. Blumberg, however, didn’t appear too impressed by the recent award, and found instead solace in discussing with a great degree of detail and passion his collection of Italian cafetieres, including a prized Alessi model. Football too was at the core of the conversation, and how, above any suspicion, it has tapped into the making-of the award winning score. 

We sat in conversation to delve into the soundtrack’s gestation and its thematic interplay with the film’s narrative.

Lorenzo Ottone: The score navigates the tension between rigidity and intimacy, evoking the stark beauty of Brutalist design itself, with the piano as its core instrument. How did the personal and emotional level establish a dialogue with the severe and monolithic one defining modernist and brutalist architecture?

DB: I was fascinated by this duality of the emotional side and the monolithic stillness of the piano, the duality of the warmth of the character and the boldness of what he is making. It was about the idea of the journey from Laszlo’s mind to the concrete. It’s a mixture of all these things you have to take into account when you’re finding sounds to support the narrative of the film and what the director is trying to say, which is quite a lot. 

LO: How did you approach it? 

DB: I approached the recording for the intimate side by reflecting on the intimacy of him alone as an artist. So, I recorded John Tilbury’s piano for [15-minute long composition] “Intermission” in relation to this experience, in a way that you could really feel his presence, and hear the piano stool still creaking.

And then, at the opposite end of that, was the piano that I recorded at Cafe Oto, which had about 16 microphones, two of which were U-89s, which are quite large diaphragm microphones that are used a lot for vocals and covered different spaces on the piano. My initial instinct, after I read the script, was that you could get a lot out of the piano. So a lot of those big thumps, those big percussive thumps that sound huge, all come from the piano preparation, which was the way John Cage prepared it, with coins and screws.

LO: What contributed to convey through sound the physicality of architectural matter?

DB: For the first time since I have been making music I used a click, because half of it the score is very constructive music. This means it’s very precise rhythmically, because it is structured around that grid, with a tight foundation, but obviously there’s stuff sliding on and off it.

LO: Did this change come from the newly-found necessity to adapt to the film’s editing or was it an artistic choice?

Daniel Blumberg: No, that was a conceptual relation to what you were talking about. It was about conceiving a sound which matched a certain type of architecture, taking into account the fact Laszlo studied at the Bauhaus for instance.

LO: And you even went to the Carrara marble quays to capture the sound of the matter…

DB: I was interested in capturing the idea of space and how it sounded, way before the shoot I started questioning myself how the locations would sound like. 

LO: How long did you spend recording there?

DB: I only had access for just one day. It was a simple process: you shoot the gun and record the echo, and then make a reverb from that. It was mostly about experimenting with different microphone positions.

LO: That is a very conceptual and radical approach for what may appear like a commercial film, if we consider all its nominations and also your background as an independent artist. 

DB: Obviously it’s a narrative film, but I think Brady [Corbit] is very radical and experimental. I always think of him in the same sort of vein as Carax, and all these narrative filmmakers who push narrative in streams. I felt an affinity with Brady’s directing style in the way I write songs. Since we first met, we always talked about the idea of the chorus and how long you can wait until you get the reward of the chorus. The theme in a film relates to the chorus in a song, and when it hits you know you can capture and direct the attention of the audience.

LO: You and Brady Corbit collaborated closely throughout the making of the soundtrack, and the film had a very long gestation, about seven years. How far back into the creative process did you start working on the project?

DB: Brady and I would talk and spend time together as friends even prior to the film.  When he finished the script, I did an initial session of the Cafè Oto piano to find the initial sonic world of the film, also because he wanted to make a trailer to raise money for the financing of the film. That was a few years before the film went into production, because it got delayed because of COVID. And, then, I really started working hardcore.

LO: The events narrated in the film span across forty years, and so does the music. For instance you decided to write original mid-century jazz tracks, like “New York” and “Jazz Club”, instead of using licensed source music. And the same was done towards the end of the film, which is set in the 1980s. Was this more of a challenge or rather something exciting, the idea to be able to move across genres? 

DB: It was a challenge, but I think the ‘80s part was fun. I was excited about the fact that Brady was moving from VistaVision to Betamax to shoot. The visual language technically changed, so I thought it was a license to also do that with the music. And I was very excited about this idea that the audience would be listening to acoustic music for three hours and twenty minutes and, then, suddenly there’s the first digital sound coming in on the last real change to their book. I actually finished that work with Brady and my flatmate: it was a cute way to end the process, because we were just sitting around my moog, having a nice time. 

LO: How about the challenging sides?

DB: In terms of challenges, I think getting the bands together for the different moods. Like, for the jazz scene and then moving ten years forward in New York. I like that process of choosing what musicians to work with, especially if they want to work with me as well. It’s nice. 

LO: This is your second soundtrack. Did you look up to any particular composers or film scores to gather your inspiration? 

DB: You know what? I have never really been into film soundtracks. I come across them through films, because I really love cinema. I remember asking Brady if I should listen to some soundtracks before starting to work on the music, and he said ‘Definitely, don’t’ [laughs].

LO: I assume this gave you a lot of creative freedom. 

DB: Recently, I was asked by the BBC what my five favourite soundtracks were and it was so interesting to think about that. I have only got one: The Naked Island [by Hikaru Hayashi, 1960]. I also mentioned the music for [Fassbinder’s] Berlin Alexanderplatz, but then I realised it was only because the DVD menu played on a loop in my flat for about two weeks, I was falling asleep to it.

LO: Before working on soundtracks you had many past musical lives. You played in indie rock bands, like Yuck and Cajun Dance Party, but also explored many sonic worlds. Did these experiences come to inform the work for The Brutalist?

DB: The stuff I did when I was young, I put it in the same bracket as when I used to have swimming lessons or other things I did when I was little. My work, for me, started from when at 22 I was introduced to Cafè Oto. My friend took me there to see a show, and it was almost like an epiphany for me. It was sort of similar to when I watched Koslowski when I was 17. I was suddenly introduced to improvised music, and it made sense to me. It was related to the way that I drew because I’ve always had a drawing practice. And from that moment, I started going there and I met Seymour Wright who has had quite a big impact on the way that I work.

LO: Speaking of drawing, you have one of Spurs player Son made by Rose Wylie on your wall. Are you into football? 

DB: I am really into football, I support Tottenham. Who do you support?

LO: Torino

DB: Oooh, you had the goalkeeper for a season, didn’t you?

LO: Joe Hart? People loved him.

DB: I have an addiction to phoning in Talk Sports, maybe because my dad always had it on. I remember once we were recording in my flat and the violin player asked if I could turn the radio down. I didn’t realise it was on, it felt natural to me.

LO: Was football part of The Brutalist recording process too?

DB: When I was recording The Brutalist I was playing a lot with Tom Weathley, the double bass player, who is also in the jazz band scene in the film. Around that time we did a concert in Berlin as a duo, and when we were practising there was a Tottenham game on, which we wanted to watch. And so we did a 90-minute trio with the match. It was so amazing, because we were playing with the match and its dynamics. We wanted to do it for a whole season.

The Brutalist original motion picture soundtrack by Daniel Blumberg is now out on Milan Records

Opening image: Daniel Blumberg. Photograph: Ilana Blumberg