Sun & Rain is a fully collaborative quartet that thus far has practiced a painstaking process of co-composing music together. Because of this extreme sense of collaboration and only working on the music when all four members were physically together, the album Waterfall took six years to compose. Beginning in 2014 the band gathered at Laplante’s residence in Vermont for semi-annual rehearsal retreats. These were not particularly relaxing retreats, as the band held themselves to a rigorous work ethic, always working around the clock.Full days were spent obsessively working on two minutes of music which were then trashed the next day and never used. It was an extraordinarily patient and slow-moving compositional process.

With Morgan, Laplante, Nazary, and Smiley all having wildly different personalities and interests outside of music, the common ground in terms of communicating musical ideas to each other began to clarify over time, which was through the language of the natural world and the elements. There are parts of the piece that recall natural events such as tsunamis, a quiet wind rustling a wind chime, a flower blossoming, a still pond with birds and frogs, forest fires with the animal’s cries, and of course a Waterfall. It was through these Earthly metaphors that a unique, vast band sound began to take shape. This common inspiration of the magic and power of the Earth makes sense when listening: how the music is one that spans great distance and is constantly shifting along the spectrum of improvisation and composition, the spectrum of intensity and gentleness, movement and stillness. This traversing of sonic territory doesn’t occur in a schizophrenic way, but rather with integrity and wholeness. 

In a time when it’s more challenging than ever to be in a band, Sun & Rain hopes to keep the torch burning for the internal rewards of spending hundreds of hours on a single piece of collaborative music. It’s not ultimately about the music compared to something else, it’s about the act of devotion that it is for four people giving of themselves to each other in service of a unified sound. This sound carries within it the love of the music and love between people who play it. This love extends to the people who listen, and to the Earth itself.