SONIC ARCHITECT

Kevin EG Perry hears from Bafta-winning composer Daniel Blumberg about the process of creating his Oscar-nominated soundscape for Brady Corbet's acclaimed film 'The Brutalist'

- Kevin EG Perry

The Brutalist begins with a squalling maelstrom of sound. In the mesmerising opening sequence of Brady Corbet’s epic Best Picture frontrunner, we see Adrien Brody’s László Tóth fleeing the Holocaust in the dark hold of a ocean liner before he eventually stumbles out into the light, elated but unbalanced, as the Statue of Liberty veers into view upside down. Staggering piano arpeggios and siren-like tubas fill the score, landing us disorientated and dazzled in Tóth’s shoes.

For composer Daniel Blumberg, who’s up for a Best Original Score Oscar this weekend, that’s the point. “That’s my approach to filmmaking,” he explains over a video call from his London flat. “I want people to be in the world of the film, so it’s about trying to find a sonic language that’s specific to the piece.”

There’s an oft-quoted adage that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but Blumberg – once best known as the frontman of indie bands Yuck and Cajun Dance Party – found himself in the novel position of actually having to write music about architecture.

Brody’s Tóth is an acclaimed Hungarian-Jewish architect who finds himself struggling in the new world, first making furniture for his cousin and later working as a coal labourer. That is until an unlikely benefactor gives him the chance to once again design a building on a fantastic scale. Blumberg’s music evokes the beauty and ambition of Tóth’s work in its corresponding grandeur. The 34-year-old also took conceptual inspiration from the building sites that Tóth oversees in the film.

“The crude example is the prepared piano,” he says. “You’re wedging screws into the strings of the piano, and the hammers hit those strings, so it’s like a cartoon of construction. Hammers and screws making music!”