Graham Reynolds Composer
Celebrated for redefining film music, Graham Reynolds broke through with his award-winning score for A Scanner Darkly (2006), launching a career of acclaimed collaborations with Richard Linklater on films like 'Bernie', 'Before Midnight', and 'Hit Man'.
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The quintessential modern composer
The Independent
Biography
Graham Reynolds is a celebrated composer whose innovative soundscapes have redefined music in film and live performance. His breakthrough came with A Scanner Darkly (2006), directed by Richard Linklater, where his unique blend of acoustic instruments and processed electric guitar earned him the title of “Best Soundtrack of the Decade” from Cinema Retro Magazine. This landmark project launched a successful collaboration with Linklater that has significantly shaped his career.
Graham Reynolds - Selection of Film Work
Highlights of Work
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Bernie (2011)
Before Midnight (2013)
Last Flag Flying (2017)
Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2019)
Hit Man (2023)
Additional Collaborative Work
The Diplomat (2015)
God Save Texas (2024) for HBO
Day 5 (2016-2017)
Live scores for iconic silent films
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Nosferatu (1922)
Metropolis (1927)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927)
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’.
