Belladonna Nocturne is Daniel Lanois’s 2026 instrumental album and a thematic sequel to his 2005 Grammy‑nominated record Belladonna, extending that earlier work’s dreamlike language into an even more nocturnal, cinematic space. Released June 19, 2026 on Red Floor Records under license to Arts Music, it comprises 14 original tracks—Cap Négre, At The Foot of The Skyway Bridge, Inside The Walls of Puebla, Snow Lake, Marionette, Canadian National, The Black Sea, Advent, Warp Sustain, The Crossing, Temple Drums, Steel Mill, Silver Orchestra 2, and Early Days—running a little over 36 minutes. Composed and performed by Lanois, and co‑produced with longtime collaborator Wayne Lorenz, the album features guest appearances from Emmylou Harris, drummer Brian Blade, bassist Daryl Johnson, and other members of his extended musical family, though the focus remains squarely on Lanois’s pedal steel, piano, and guitar as narrative instruments.Sonically, Belladonna Nocturne situates itself between ambient, space‑jazz, and haunted Americana, drawing on Lanois’s history with Brian Eno’s ambient records, his work on U2’s atmospheric rock, and the spacious country and gospel textures he helped craft with artists like Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, and Bob Dylan. Short pieces such as Cap Négre and At The Foot of The Skyway Bridge feel like miniature film cues, while tracks like Inside The Walls of Puebla and The Black Sea evoke ghostly waltzes and funereal marches, with skittering percussion and dub‑like mixing reframing pedal steel and piano as drifting, shadowy voices. Elsewhere, Snow Lake, Marionette, Canadian National, and Silver Orchestra 2 explore fragile, gossamer shimmers and cinematic jazz over wire‑like textures, creating the sensation of a single night’s passage—“pitter‑patter of nighttime noodles and midnight moods and early‑AM drift”—compressed into a compact album. Lanois himself describes Belladonna Nocturne as “a new body of work, a string of exotic selections designed to transport a listener to exotic thoughts,” and the record’s layered, late‑night atmospheres are designed to be immersive rather than linear, inviting listeners into a sublime, mysterious sound‑world that feels unmistakably his.
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