Alex Somers is an American composer, musician and producer from Baltimore, Maryland.
Somers first rose to prominence in 2009 via his ambient album collaboration, ‘Riceboy Sleeps’, with partner Jónsi, under the artist name Jónsi & Alex. He had previously toured America in support of Jónsi’s band Sigur Rós with his own outfit Parachutes, having previously attended Berklee College of Music in Boston to study composition.
Following the highly acclaimed ‘Riceboy Sleeps’ project, Somers went on to play keyboards and guitar in Jónsi’s touring band, having already co-produced tracks on his 2010 debut solo album, ‘Go’. He then started expanding his production work at his studio space in Reykjavík, co-producing Sigur Rós’ 2013 album, ‘Valtari’, and producing albums for Subpop’s Death Vessel, vocal experimentalist Julianna Barwick, Briana Marela and Icelandic bands Pascal Pinon and Sin Fang.
In 2014, Somers mixed Damien Rice’s ‘My Favorite Faded Fantasy’. In 2015 he and Jónsi scored the first season of US network WGN’s atomic bomb drama Manhattan, and in 2016 he scored Matt Ross’s Cannes-feted Captain Fantastic, and NY artist Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time. Since then, Somers has continued his score work composing original scores for award-winning films such as Honey Boy (2019) and Together, Together (2021), as well as the Taylor Swift documentary Miss Americana (2020).
Somers, along with Jónsi and producer and composer Paul Corley, have been performing the hypnotic Liminal sound bath at events around the world, and in 2019, Jónsi and Somers toured a newly orchestrated live performance of their 2009 album, ‘Riceboy Sleeps’, in celebration of the album’s tenth anniversary. 2021 brought the release of his debut double album, ‘Siblings 1 & 2’.
Somers is also a visual artist, exhibiting his work with Jónsi around the world, as well as co-creating the sleeves for Sigur Rós’s ‘Takk…’ and ‘Riceboy Sleeps’.