What Lies Below

Up and coming composer Gavin Keese has written a genre-bending score for What Lies Below, a domestic drama infused with the music of an alien invasion film. Written and directed by Braden R. Duemmler, the film tells the story of 16 year-old Liberty Wells (Ema Horvath) who returns home from camp just to learn that her mother Michelle (Mena Suvari) has a new boyfriend, one she intendeds to marry. Despite him and Liberty forming a strange bond, the charm, the intelligence the beauty and even the generic name of John Smith (Trey Tucker) all point to the direction that he may have an otherwordly secret to hide.

Up and coming composer Gavin Keese has written a genre-bending score for What Lies Below, a domestic drama infused with the music of an alien invasion film. Written and directed by Braden R. Duemmler, the film tells the story of 16 year-old Liberty Wells (Ema Horvath) who returns home from camp just to learn that her mother Michelle (Mena Suvari) has a new boyfriend, one she intendeds to marry. Despite him and Liberty forming a strange bond, the charm, the intelligence the beauty and even the generic name of John Smith (Trey Tucker) all point to the direction that he may have an otherwordly secret to hide.

Gavin Keese explains: “The first direction Braden gave me for his film What Lies Below was, ‘How would you like to compose some music that sounds like it’s from an alien planet?’ This became the seed for one of the most unusual scores I’ve written. The fim’s antagonist has a special connection to water, so a large part of the score was created by submerging instruments in water and creating unique sounds from those recordings. We developed this into a brooding and unsettling soundscape, often heavily processed to disguise the origin of the original instruments. I wanted the audience to never be sure whether they were hearing something organic or synthetic, to mirror how the antagonist is not what he seems.”

Originally from Houston, Texas, composer Gavin Keese is a graduate of the acclaimed Scoring For Motion Pictures and Television program at USC. In the past few years, Gavin has contributed additional music to NBC’s Blindspot, scored by composers Blake Neely and Sherri Chung, in addition to contributing music to several projects scored by Bear McCreary, including Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Outlander, and The Walking Dead. His recent projects include a Cambodian-themed score for the feature In the Life of Music, score and songs for the gypsy jazz musical Sing For Your Supper, and a funk/bluegrass score for the upcoming feature documentary Generation Growth.

MMS21001 What Lies Below (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Music Composed by Gavin Keese
Release date (digital): February 19, 2021

More info at: Official Web Site MovieScore Media