Graham Reynolds
Graham Reynolds, the Austin-based 'quintessential modern composer' (London Independent), unveils his debut solo album, Mountain, in 2025, expanding his distinctive sound beyond acclaimed scores for films like Before Midnight and A Scanner Darkly."
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The quintessential modern composer
The Independent
Biography
Graham Reynolds is an Austin legend. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, grew up in America’s northeast, and then he relocated to Texas and became part of the furniture as half of the Golden Hornet, man handling punk’s DIY ethic into classical music. He tumbled into movie soundtracks (A Scanner Darkly, etc), theatre pieces, and became renowned for an annual re-imagining of festivities with the live extravaganza Graham Reynolds Ruins The Holidays.
Having become a regular audio foil for Richard Linklater’s movies, highlights of which include the acclaimed score for the closing chapter of the Before triptych Before Midnight.
A rare talent
Pop Matters
DEBUT ALBUM
Graham Reynolds releases his debut solo album for Fire Records, Mountain, on March 21st, 2025.
A socio-geographic trip along the Sierra in your mind, standout title track ‘Mountain (Part 1)’ is filled with romantic orchestral sweeps conjuring up an image of a vast landscape disrupted by a singular peak, while ‘…Part 2’ takes a more jagged path, traversing an angular ridge before steadying itself into a piece of Hermann-esque Hitchcock.
Ominous sounds of the natural world, in both its beauty and despair
The New York Times
‘Mountain’ is America writ large, a soundscape for a big country, a place you can wander adrift, much like the main character in the 1945 Billy Wilder film The Lost Weekend, starring Ray Milland, that’s central to the track of the same name, a theme that’s expanded with classical grandeur and much melancholy, much later on the gorgeous ‘Lost Weekend (Revisited)’ that almost acts as a companion piece to some of Graham’s more familiar film work.
‘Mt Monadnock’ in New Hampshire is namechecked, while the ‘Enchanted Rock’ (a thunderous Einstürzende Neubauten-like reawakening of the senses played out on Graham’s signature booming orchestral drum) stands just outside of Austin, Texas, Reynolds’ home-base for over 30 years.
Composed and performed by Graham Reynolds, with contributions from his rotating cast of musical compadres, the album was produced and mixed by mysterious English duo Peter Talisman. There are surprises throughout the album as Austin neighbour Jad Fair (Half Japanese) pops up with backing vocals along with Italian chanteuse Marta del Grandi whose evocative words on ‘Linger In Silence’ spark a wonderful re-awakening of the exquisite seven-minute stand-out ‘Prophet Harmonic’.
