Philip Glass : The Music of Undertow  (Audio CD) 
by Philip Glass

UNDERTOW, set in an American South untouched by time, is a uniquely American dramatic thriller from director David Gordon Green starring Jamie Bell, Josh Lucas, Dermot Mulroney, and newcomer Devon Alan. A tale of violent legacies between two generations of brothers, UNDERTOW depicts what happens when a hardworking father raising two sons without their mother is paid an unexpected visit by his older ex-convict brother who is looking to settle an old score.

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.