Duncan Rich co-founded SOM with frontman and former Constants colleague Will Benoit, as well as Adai founder and now-Caspian drummer Justin Forrest. While touring on The Fall in 2019, the band added guitarists Mike Repasch-Nieves and Joel M. Reynolds, both formerly of Junius and Driftoff. “We’ve always been a musical family,” Rich adds.
Repasch-Nieves continues, “Will and I started a label, Radar Recordings, in Boston during the early 2000s, which was an amazing time and place for music. It was very much a collective of like-minded artists, which grew as we all toured around the world together in the years to follow.” The alluring Awake is far from the five longtime friends’ only endeavour to create a better world around them. Despite being recorded in quarantine, the EP was mixed by Benoit at his own Radar Studio in Connecticut – New England’s first solar-powered recording facility. Repasch-Nieves and Reynolds, meanwhile, spent 2020 sustaining an urban farm in New York City, while Forrest distributed vegan food to Black Lives Matter activists in Denver through the Summer. Equally philanthropic is Rich, who now uses his production experience to host emotional fluency events for men. While many musicians lumbered in inactivity, SOM used the darkness of recent times to create and heal. Awake‘s bliss is an insight not only into the kind of harmony the quintet seeks to cultivate in all facets of life, but also the exciting second full-length that looms on the horizon.
SOM are:
Will Benoit – vocals, guitars
Justin Forrest – bass
Mike Repasch-Nieves – guitars
Joel M. Reynolds – guitars
Duncan Rich – drums
Pre-order Awake here: https://somtheband.bandcamp.com/
SOM Online:
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