When in Vegas, meet an EDM duo, and ink a licensing deal. Here is a Q&A with my new partners in creative collaboration… SOZ!

Alright, I think everyone is dying to know — how do you pronounce SOZ?

SOZ is a combination of the words “Sauce” and “Saw”.  The meaning behind it is that the word sauce in pop culture means style and saw is our favorite type of waveform when we are building our synths. “Saws” would be the correct pronunciation.

Now that we know how to say SOZ — who are Noah Arin and Sean Kennedy?

Sean Kennedy is a 23-year-old songwriter, producer and mix engineer based out of Las Vegas who is also known by his surname All The Sauce.  His focus up to this point has been mainly Rap and Hip Hop. His most notable writing credit to-date is with Las Vegas rapper Ekoh, whose album, “The Detour“, debuted at no. 35 on the iTunes Hip-Hop charts at the beginning of June 2018.  Sean mixed and mastered the entire project as well as having some kind of production on almost every song on the project. Check out the single, Pickle Rick.

Noah Arin is a 22-year-old producer and mix engineer who was born in Las Vegas. After spending his high school and some of his college years on the east coast, Noah came home and quickly began, “mastering his craft.” After dialing in his skills, Noah began a mentorship under Grammy-nominated Luca Pretolesi. Since then, there has been a steep rise in both his productional and mixing skills. Now, Noah is both a member of SOZ and RÜST.

How did Justin Oringer enter the world of SOZ?

We met Justin, or “OJ” as we call him, through one of Noah’s friends, Oscar Chialtel. They both go to USC.  On a trip down to LA in 2016, we began working on a whole bunch of music.  During that trip, Justin introduced us to another producer and songwriter, Jack Koplin of RÜST. Meeting Jack turned out to be a major stepping stone for our vision. Aside from being a part of Noah’s other project, Jack became an important member of the SOZ team. He wrote the vocal portion of our song “Ride” that we just released.  As we grew closer and all of our skills improved, it came time to start working together professionally. OJ has a detailed recap of our first time meeting on his website.

Tell us about your music, why will it change the world?

We write music to express ourselves. At the end of the day, making this music is therapy for us.  We both have a hard time expressing how we feel in our regular lives and we feel that this music is the best representation of our emotions.  Think of it as an emotional timeline.

We want to bring emotion to a genre of music that often lacks feeling.  At this point in history, there’s a lot of music that’s being “farmed” by the corporate side of the industry, especially in EDM.  As a result, a lot of the emotion that connects people to the music has been given a backseat to increase profits.  We want to give a real and honest piece of ourselves to the world, and hopefully, that piece of ourselves can be someone else common ground.

Let’s hear from each of you about your unique business background in two sentences…

Sean:  I have been producing music since I was 15, and I have been doing bookkeeping and finance work for around the same amount of time.  I built a business around both of those things and now I consult for 5 different companies and do production for 4 different artists on a regular basis.

Noah:  I have worked at various jobs ranging from being a law clerk to working at a graphic design studio. Since then I have slowly been converting myself over to the music side since.

How would you describe our hang in Vegas?

It was such a unique and memorable experience to meet you and all of your friends. We think part of the reason it was so memorable was your ability to help build our vision. When we were sitting on the balcony overlooking the Bellagio fountains, we pitched you our goals and plans for the future of SOZ. Immediately after we finished, you had so many great ideas for how to build ourselves as a business. Your help and words of wisdom have helped and will continue to shape our vision.

Let’s hear about the big release — why should people take the RIDE with SOZ?

The response on Ride has been more than what we had originally hoped for.  We think the main reason people should take this journey with us is to connect with an emotional side of EDM. With that said, we also care about what leaves our studio.  Our quality threshold is very high and we want to get people listening to well-written, well-mixed, sonically mesmerizing music.

In five years, SOZ just did what?

A World Tour, and 2 albums with commissioned Borbay pieces as the artwork! [Borbay: Hell yes.]

Connect with SOZ on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter here.