The visionary composer behind Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight & A Scanner Darkly releases his first proper studio album on Fire Records. ‘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. It is a socio-geographic trip along the Sierra in your mind filled with romantic orchestral sweeps conjuring up an image of a vast landscape disrupted by a singular peak.
“Reynolds stretches his repertoire across widescreen Texan vistas with jittery interludes of anarchy” Uncut
“The quintessential modern composer” The Independent
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. ‘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’.
“This album is personal. It starts with Monadnock, the first mountain I ever climbed, up in New England. The first side ends with Enchanted Rock, the first mountain I climbed in my adopted state of Texas. And, though I’ve been releasing music for my whole adult life, this is the first time I’ve had real label support for something of my own, unattached to a film or other media. So, in a way, oddly, it’s my first real solo album” Graham Reynolds.
…as William Blake once said:
“Great things are done when men and mountains meet”
Live Dates
16-17 May: Flatpack Festival, Birmingham, UK
25 May: Cafe OTO, London, UK, w/ Daisy Rickman
27 May: Norwich Arts Centre, Norwich, UK
08 Jun: Handmade Festival, Bologna, Italy
