Daniel Lanois - Belladonna Nocturne

Belladonna Nocturne is intended as a thematic sequel to Belladonna, Daniel Lanois' moody, evocative album of ambient and dub instrumentals from 2005. While it maintains a similar feel and features some of the same personnel, it sounds like a venture into new terrain right from the start. "Cap Negre" is a short intro piece containing sporadic rhythms and heavily detailed yet spacious mixing, leading into the jazzy abstract drift of "At the Foot of the Skyway Bridge." 

Slightly haunting yet cool-headed and relaxed, the music paints an intoxicating nighttime scene. "Inside the Walls of Puebla" is more rustic, with sturdy, knocking drums and a Latin flair to the layered acoustic guitars. The deeply resonant piano piece "Snow Lake" seems far too texturally treated to label as ambient, bordering on musique concrète. "Marionette" dances to a gently playful, shaker-heavy rhythm. Lanois' signature steel guitar comes to the forefront on the patient, ruminative "The Black Sea." "Advent" is the album's centerpiece, and its most risk-taking experiment. While it isn't particularly dense or heavy, there's a palpable tension between the effects-treated guitars and tumbling drums, particularly set into motion during the occasional jump cuts. It gets particularly spine-chilling towards the end, when Emmylou Harris' wordless voice wails from the void a few times. 

Lanois coaxes some otherworldly, almost frightening sounds from his guitars on the distorted, mind-blurring "Warp Sustain" and the lighter but equally trippy "The Crossing." "Steel Mill" lays into a supremely hypnotic downtempo groove, and it's one of the album's most soothing and transportive moments. More than half a century into his career as a producer and musician, Lanois is still pushing the limits of his craft, and Belladonna Nocturne is among his most sonically daring work. AllMusicGuide