Each month in the magazine we play an artist or group a series of tracks which they are asked to comment on – with no prior knowledge of what they are about to hear.

In The Wire 505 it is the turn of composer and artist Daniel Blumberg.

Here you can listen to a mix of the tracks our correspondent Claire Biddles played to Blumberg during the interview, which is published in full in The Wire 505. To find out what they said about them, subscribers can read the interview in our online magazine library here. Or you can buy a copy of the magazine in our online shop.

But first, a brief biography of our subject:

Daniel Blumberg is an artist from London working across song, improvisation, film composition and drawing. After spending his teenage years playing in guitar bands, he found an antidote to his musical frustration in the world of improvised music, and in the mid-2010s became heavily involved in the community around Cafe Oto, which remains his artistic home. Across various configurations, his regular collaborators include saxophonist Seymour Wright, vocalist Elvin Brandhi, and violinist Billy Steiger. His three solo albums – Minus (2018), On&On (2020) and Gut (2023) – are sometimes beautiful, sometimes tense meetings of emotive songwriting and improvised performance.

In film, Blumberg works primarily with the writer-producer team of Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet, who take turns directing projects. In 2020, he composed his first feature score for Fastvold’s The World To Come. This was followed by his 2024 score for Corbet’s The Brutalist – featuring the likes of saxophonist Evan Parker and pianist John Tilbury – which won an Academy Award. Equally epic in scope is Blumberg’s soundtrack for Fastvold’s 2025 film The Testament Of Ann Lee, an avant garde musical using the hymns of the Shaker Christian sect as its starting point. Over 100 singers can be heard in the film, including lead actor Amanda Seyfried, improvising vocalist Maggie Nicols, Low’s Alan Sparhawk and Blumberg’s sister and close collaborator, Ilana. In 2025 he also composed scores for Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary Sotto Le Nuvole (Below The Clouds), featuring underwater recordings of saxophonists Seymour Wright and John Butcher.

A graduate of the Royal Drawing School, Blumberg is also a prolific visual artist, with his first solo exhibition opening this March at Galerie Balice Hertling in Paris. Working in silverpoint, his drawings reveal sparse environments populated by beguiling humanoid figures. Across all mediums, Blumberg’s work maintains a distinct sense of vulnerable physicality – weather-beaten but curious and defiant.

The Jukebox was conducted online, with Daniel Blumberg at home in London.

Tracklist (with time stamps):

Michel Legrand & Corinne Marchand (00:00)
“Sans Toi”
From Cléo From 5 To 7 OST
(Philips) 1962

Yeah You (02:25)
“Myopia”
From HELPING ART IS NOT
(Bandcamp) 2014

Billy Steiger (6:26)
“'''' ”
From Loud Object
(Otoroku) 2022

Scott Walker (20:20)
“Darkness”
From Plague Songs (4AD) 2006

Daniel Lopatin (24:05)
"Marty’s Dream”
From Marty Supreme OST
(A24) 2025

Pamela Z (25:12)
“Badagada”
From Echolocation (Freedom To Spend) 2021, rec 1988

David Sylvian (28:54)
“Random Acts Of Senseless Violence”
From Manofon
(SamadhiSound) 2009

Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross/Alan Sparhawk/ BJ Burton (36:01)
“Vaster Than Empires”
From Queer OST
(Milan) 2024

Soul-Junk (39:54)
“Mark 7:6-9”
From 1950
(Holy Kiss Rex) 1994