Daniel Lanois Says Sound Is the Given, but Soul Is the Real Work

Daniel Lanois has spent decades building a reputation on sound. The echoes and fractures that define records like Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind or Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball are his calling card. But in a new interview, Lanois draws a firm line. “People talk about the sound, but what about the soul?” he says. “Sound is my thing. But that’s not the main thing I bring to the table.”

His own new album, Belladonna Nocturne, puts that distinction to the test. It’s a collection of instrumentals built from atmosphere: the Spanish-guitar-driven “Inside the Walls of Puebla,” the warped feedback loops of “Warp Sustain.” Each track works as a scene, Lanois explains, from the urban grit of “Steel Mill” to the Fifties-tinged nostalgia of “At the Foot of the Skyway Bridge,” referencing the steel town of Hamilton, Ontario, where he grew up.

The record leaves space. On “Steel Mill,” drummer Jermaine Holmes — whom Lanois met through D’Angelo — plays a stark cross-stick backbeat, leaving air for other textures to rise. Lanois then layered his own dubs, using electronics to build orchestral tones without a traditional orchestra. It’s a method rooted in trust: less is more, as long as the soul remains.

Lanois also teased a forthcoming collaborative album, The Ocean Floor, recorded with Micah Nelson under the name Particle/Lanois. The duo recently toured as part of the Outlaw Music Festival. For now, Belladonna Nocturne stands as a reminder that the producer’s real instrument might not be the studio console. It’s the silence between the notes.