The Music of Undertow

With a screenplay by Joe Conway and David Gordon Green, story by Lingard Gervey, produced by Lisa Muskat, Terrence Malick and Edward R. Pressman, and distributed by United Artists, UNDERTOW is a production of ContentFilm's John Schmidt and Alessandro Camon who serve as executive producers.

Producer Edward R. Pressman had for some time been trying to get Philip Glass to score one of his films and approached him with the script. After reading it, Glass visited the set in the swamps of Georgia, enduring biting sand gnats and the heat of the South to get a feel for the film. After production wrapped, the composer and director quickly got down to business.

The score, combining a crystalline string orchestration, the purity of the children's voices and the grittiness of the didgeridoo, creates the right mix of mystery, sensitivity and grunge that the film required. With its tonal complexity and intensity, Glass' score is as integral to the suspense-driven narrative as the expert character portrayal and masterful cinematic direction contained within the film.

Album Description
The acclaimed composer's score to the third film from talented young film-maker David Gordon Green. Orange Mountain. 2004.