Alex Somers
Alex Somers is a multi-faceted musician and visual artist originally from Baltimore. After college, he spent much of the 2000s recording as half of experimental project Parachute, doing artwork for bands including Sigur Rós and collaborating on art and music with Sigur Rós' Jónsi (Jon Thor Birgisson). As Jónsi & Alex, they issued the album Riceboy Sleeps in 2009. Adding production, engineering, and mixing credits to his résumé along the way, Somers opened his own studio and collaborated with artists including Sigur Rós, Pascal Pinon, and Sound of Ceres throughout the 2010s. Bringing his atmospheric synths to the big screen, his early film scores included 2016's Captain Fantastic and 2019's Honey Boy. As demand for his scores increased, he issued the solo albums Siblings and Siblings 2 in 2021.
A Baltimore native, Somers studied composition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and visual art at the Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavik. Continuing to split his time between the two countries as a professional in both fields, he formed experimental duo Parachute with Scott Alario in Boston in 2003, delivering a home-recorded self-titled debut EP that December. That same year, Somers began collaborating on art and music with Sigur Rós frontman Jon Thor Birgisson. Back with Parachute, Somers recorded what would be their only full-length, Susy, in Tuscany, Italy, releasing it in December 2004.
First calling themselves Riceboy Sleeps, Somers and Birgisson published an art book also called Riceboy Sleeps in Iceland in 2006. It was distributed internationally the following year. They also had their first gallery exhibitions outside of Iceland (in Arkansas and Melbourne) in 2007 and issued two pieces of music, "All the Big Trees" and "Daníell in the Sea," both with accompanying videos. Somers recorded the Parachute's EP Tree Roots in Iceland, delivering the finished songs in 2008. After a half-decade of working on their music intermittently and haphazardly, Birgisson and Somers decided to get serious about shaping tracks that had been recorded in Iceland entirely on acoustic instruments into a finished project. They included contributions from the string quartet Amiina (longtime Sigur Rós collaborators) and the Kópavogsdætur Choir. The pair spent February of 2009 mixing the songs for their debut album while staying at a remote, solar-powered, raw-food commune in Hawaii. One of those songs, "Happiness," appeared in unfinished form on the Red Hot Organization compilation Dark Was the Night. By the time it was released in July 2009, Riceboy Sleeps was simply the title of the album, the duo having changed their name to Jónsi & Alex.
Somers opened his own recording studio in downtown Reykjavik in 2010 and went on to produce albums such as Sin Fang's Flowers (2013) and Julianna Barwick's Nepenthe (2013), meanwhile collaborating on Sigur Rós recordings including 2012's Valtari and 2013's Kveikur. Beginning in 2014, he and Birgisson joined the scoring team of TV's Manhattan, a drama series about the Manhattan Project that lasted two seasons. Somers subsequently branched into film, scoring the 2016 indie comedy Captain Fantastic and the 2019 Shia LaBeouf film Honey Boy in addition to further work for television. Another Jónsi & Alex album, Lost & Found, also arrived in 2019, which marked the ten-year anniversary of its predecessor.
In 2020, Somers' compositions could be heard in the Baltimore-set Charm City Kings (aka Twelve) and the Taylor Swift documentary Miss Americana. Both issued on March 19, 2021, the solo albums Siblings and Siblings 2 found Somers exploring ambient and experimental electronic music, post-rock, and modern composition to haunting effect. That same year, his score output included the indie comedy Together Together, and he released Light Past Blue, a collaboration with Aska Matsumiya originally created for an exhibit by French artists Claire Tabouret. It included contributions from cellist Gyða Valtýsdóttir (Múm) and harpist Mary Lattimore. The year 2022 brought the release of the scripted films Fresh and Causeway and the documentaries Cai Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story and Branson, all featuring scores by Somers.
© Marcy Donelson & K. Ross Hoffman /TiVo
Discography
20 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
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Riceboy Sleeps (2019 Remaster)
Rock - Released by Parlophone UK on 6 apr. 2009
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Black Mirror: Hang the DJ (Music from the Original TV Series)
Tv-series - Released by Krunk on 30 dec. 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Here We Are (Apple TV+ Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Originele soundtracks - Released by Lakeshore Records on 7 apr. 2020
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
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Honey Boy (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Originele soundtracks - Released by Krunk on 8 nov. 2019
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Captain Fantastic (Music from the Film)
Originele soundtracks - Released by Lakeshore Records on 8 jul. 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Causeway (Soundtrack from the Apple Original Film)
Originele soundtracks - Released by Lakeshore Records on 2 dec. 2022
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
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Black Mirror: Hang the DJ (Music from the Original TV Series)
Originele soundtracks - Released by Alex Somers on 30 dec. 2017
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Fresh (Original Soundtrack)
Originele soundtracks - Released by Hollywood Records on 24 jun. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mars (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Originele soundtracks - Released by Krunk on 2 dec. 2022
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Birki
Jónsi, Sin Fang, Kjartan Holm, Alex Somers
Ambient - Released by INNI on 26 aug. 2022
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Audrey (Original Film Soundtrack)
Originele soundtracks - Released by Silva Screen Records Ltd on 11 dec. 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
When You Wish Upon A Death Star
Alternative en Indie - Released by Krunk on 24 dec. 2022
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Beitilyng
Jónsi, Sin Fang, Kjartan Holm, Alex Somers
Ambient - Released by INNI on 5 aug. 2022
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -