[PREORDER] Daniel Blumberg - The Testament of Ann Lee (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (Vinyl)

Double Black Vinyl, Gatefold Sleeve With Printed Inner Sleeves

Daniel Blumberg wrote this score for The Testament of Ann Lee, Mona Fastvold's film about the founder of the Shakers, with Amanda Seyfried in the title role. Blumberg won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Brutalist; here he works from Shaker hymnody rather than toward it, taking ten archival hymns and reimagining them alongside three original songs.

The music was built on set rather than written to picture afterward, growing alongside the choreography and the performances. Blumberg assembled close to a hundred singers for it. The extreme vocal improvisers Maggie Nicols, Phil Minton, Shelley Hirsch and Freya Edmondes sing next to untrained voices, the High Holborn Chamber Choir and the Campbell Works Choir, and the result is closer to a wordless mass of vocal texture than to choral arrangement. Thomasin McKenzie takes the lead vocal on the title piece, Amanda Seyfried on "Beautiful Treasures."

Under and around the voices sit tuned percussion, spectral bell tones and celeste, with an ensemble of experimental players: Steve Noble on percussion, Tom Wheatley on double bass and viol, Joel Grip on double bass, Billy Steiger and Angharad Davies on violin, Okkyung Lee on cello and Rhodri Davies on harp. Blumberg himself plays celeste, hand bells, chimes and bells across most of the record.

The end-credits song "Clothed by the Sun" closes side D, sung as a duet by Blumberg and Seyfried. Thirty-three pieces run across the four sides.

The double vinyl is housed in a gatefold sleeve with printed inner sleeves carrying the full per-track credits, designed by Sebastian Pardo, the film's title designer, working with Blumberg.

Tracklist

Side A

1. The Testament of Ann Lee
2. Manchester
3. Hero Prayer One
4. Walk to Infirmary
5. Infirmary
6. Walk to Wardleys
7. Wardleys
8. Worship
9. Sex Celeste
10. Beautiful Treasures
11. Search for Ann

Side B

1. I Never Did Believe
2. Hunger & Thirst
3. Ship
4. Lower Deck
5. Today Today
6. Storm
7. All is Summer

Side C

1. Magical Boat Ride
2. John's Running Song
3. Whores
4. Niskayuna
5. The Eclipse
6. Bow Down O Zion
7. Building & Growing
8. William Walking
9. I Love Mother (Pretty Mother's Home)

Side D

1. Arrest
2. Stone Prison
3. Shattuck
4. Down to the Deep
5. Beautiful Treasures Funeral
6. Clothed by the Sun