Soundwalk Collective
Music from the motion picture:‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’
A film by Laura Poitras with Nan Goldin
Out via Analogue Foundation on 26th May. Digital & Physical:
Regular Edition 12” LP & Numbered/Signed Artist Edition 12” LP
Pre-order – here / High-res artwork – download here.
Praise for the film:● ‘Best Film’ Winner The Golden Lion Awards (2022)● ‘Best Documentary’ Nominee The Oscars (2023)● “Gripping” The Guardian ****● “Truly special” Evening Standard *****.
● “Unmissable” Financial Times *****● “A sad yet exhilarating dance….It should be top of your watchlist” i-D● “A dense and gripping account” The Times ****
● “Enthralling” La Times● “Riveting and essential” The Telegraph● “A complicated and deeply moving account” The Independent
Laura Poitras’ Oscar-nominated film ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’ is an epic, emotional andinterconnected story about internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin. Told through intimate
interviews, photography, and footage, central to the story is her personal fight to hold the Sackler family
accountable for the opioid crisis. The film cuts to the bone with its incandescent celebration of life andcondemnation of those who threaten it. Art and activism are one and the same.
Helping to interweave Goldin’s past and present, multi-disciplinary duo Soundwalk Collective soundtrack
her personal and political struggles to sublime effect. The contemporary sonic arts platform of founder andartist Stephan Crasneanscki and producer Simone Merli, the pair work with a rotating constellation of artists
and musicians, developing site-and-context-specific sound projects through which to examine conceptual,
literary, or artistic themes. And for all the beauty and the bloodshed on show here, the duo strike thebalance just right; their compositions in collaboration with Zacharias Falkenberg and Johannes Malfatti
producing a trance that oscillates between grace and madness.
Within the score, Crasneanscki draws connections with the life and work of German poet FriedrichHölderlin, who was removed from society through confinement in institutions. In his last poems, written asfragments while he was plagued by mental illness, Hölderlin renders nature, in all its fragility andephemerality. Similar themes merge in Laura's portrait of Goldin and serve as an inspiration for thecomposition of the choral songs and cantus within the soundtrack. Through the repetition of words and thelayering of voices, the lyric scansion operates like a language possessed, echoing various styles fromsacred music to modern minimalist techniques. The music is characterised by quivering strings and swells,
de-tuning and lingering, shifting around the surreal, and creating a spectrum of musical experience. Exerts
of Nan’s narration are featured in two of the tracks, her powerful narration offering a more direct approachto the storytelling.
Soundwalk Collective have collaborated with Patti Smith, Paul B. Preciado, Abel Ferrara, Catherine
Deneuve, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe, Philip Glass, Nina Kraviz, Sasha Waltz, Mulatu Astatke andJean-Luc Godard, amongst others. In doing so, their practice engages in the narrative potential of soundacross mediums such as art installation, dance, music and film. Whether in original composition or the useof archival recordings, they treat sound as material that is both tactile and poetic. This allows them to create
layered narratives that address ideas of memory, time, love and loss. They have performed and exhibitedat a diverse range of arts and music institutions, such as Berghain, Centre Pompidou, CTM Festival,documenta, KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Manifesta, Mobile Art Pavillion by Zaha
Hadid and New Museum.
In ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,’ Poitras shows protest is really Goldin’s great artwork: Her entire life
had been leading to this moment of passionate expression, an inspired situationist gesture which fused thepersonal and the political. Art can change the world, which Poitras and Goldin tell us with powerful results.
While there are multiple threads in this remarkable portrait which could have carried entire films, thesoundtrack provides a sonic identity that helps keep track of proceedings. Utterly unique in their approach,Soundwalk Collective have delivered a gripping and thoughtful score, helping turn Goldin’s personal pain
into culture-rattling impact.

Back cover photo by Nan Goldin: ‘Self-Portrait with Scratched Back After Sex, London, 1978’ / Download high-res here

For more information, contact billy@9pr.co.uk.