Graham Reynolds Is Not of This Earth
By Marc Savlov, Fri., July 25, 2008
"The immediate problem when you approach the scoring of a science-fiction film is that it's set in the future or on an alien world or whatever the story demands of you musically," explains Austin composer Graham Reynolds.
Reynolds, who, amidst a seemingly infinite number of musical projects with Golden Arm Trio and its myriad offshoots, composed the score for Richard Linklater's ani-daptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly and knows whereof he speaks. In addition to A Scanner Darkly, Reynolds has composed future-fluent sound for Austinite Justin Hennard's moody Moonlight by the Sea, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the infamous Turkish Star Wars (with Buzz Moran's Foleyvision), and 1970s disco hack Meco's favorite: a series of all Star Wars covers shows.
"The problem with scoring sci-fi," notes Reynolds, "is that even the newest technology is not the music of the future for very long at all. With Scanner, the first approach we talked about was an all-acoustic route. But with the drug element so integral to the film and with the disconnect between the drug storyline and an acoustic score, it just didn't work.
"Our ultimate solution, and one which echoes the fact that the film was first shot on video, was to use acoustic instruments and then transform them with digital effects. It was organically heightened. The movie is set seven years in the future, so I guess we still have a couple more years until we find out how dated the score is."