Photo by Caroline O’Callaghan

By Maddy Marcus
Staff Writer

Swim, a Long Island-based band from Setauket, New York, is releasing their debut extended-play album in November. The EP will be available both digitally and physically, and is currently available for pre-orders.

The band began recording the EP in June at a studio on Long Island owned by a mutual friend. In addition to recording the album, band members met with graphic designers and photographers to make the physical copy of the EP “all encompassing.”

The album will feature a CD with five songs, as well as a booklet complete with photos of the band and song lyrics. Band Manager Justin Iaquinta said they will also be including a sticker on the front of every album with a unique message so that no two albums are alike.

Members  Daniel McCaffery, Nick Riviezzo, Tyler Aigotti, Brian D’Angio and Iaquinta formed the band in the summer of 2014. McCaffery, Riviezzo and Iaquinta, all students at Stony Brook University, were previously bandmates before Swim, and were in need of a drummer and bassist when they met Aigotti and D’Angio in August 2014.

After two months of brainstorming band names, Iaquinta suggested the name Swim. He said it’s a simple and clean name that makes no suggestion to the genre of music and allows the band to develop their own sound.

“The music we write is not something [people] fade out of,” guitarist Nick Riviezzo said.

Swim got their start performing live gigs in January 2015 when they played at a popular bar in Stony Brook, The Bench. From there, the band performed at other local bars, restaurants and events across Suffolk County at least once a month. The band also played at Stony Brook University’s Earthstock festival last April, as well as making an appearance on radio station WUSB earlier this month.

“We’re trying to become unquestionably the most popular band on campus,” Iaquinta said.

Since then, the band moved away from performing cover songs and began to put their original tracks out there. After gaining traction from fans, they put five of their songs together onto the EP coming out this fall. In conjunction with their album, Swim is planning a release show on November 22 — the same date their album is said to drop. The band has invited other local bands that they know to put on something of a mini-festival in celebration of their debut EP.

According to Iaquinta, Swim is going through a transitional phase and hopes to come out of it as a new band.

“Music is not something you assume to know how to do,” Iaquinta said. “We’ve gotten more educated, more audacious and we know where we’re going now.”

After the release of the EP, the band said they hope to extend their presence off Long Island and into New York City and other surrounding cities.