Weston Estate has always been better together. The music group and collective of Marco Gomez, Tanmay Joshi, Abhi Manhass, Srikar Nanduri, and Manas Panchavati, have known each other for most of their lives. The North Carolina natives had always talked about making music together and after a little bit of sending beats back and forth to each other, Abhi, Tanmay and Srikar started making full length songs together. Soon after, Marco and Manas joined the group and they continued to make music together and played shows in North Carolina. Their first moment where they really saw that they could do music for real was headlining a festival in Durham for 500 people. “Just seeing how people reacted to having something, like some type of community in motion in our city, that kind of made us want to keep going and keep expanding. It came from the fact that there were people who I distantly knew but who were also looking up to us and asking us about how to go about getting started with something like this,” Abhi said. “It was an inspiring moment that I wouldn’t have found in any other job. It would have been way less fulfilling to go and work in a corporate job than make music and show people that you can do it.”

The group now has multiple EP’s and singles out, not to mention their videos gaining more and more traction on social media. Their latest EP, Superbloom, highlights the group’s growth and struggles the past few years. “We all decided to live together for a year and a half, which was really fun but also really really challenging because there was no separation between what is work and what not. It was a huge learning experience last year. There’s a lot of love but there’s also a lot of competition which has been reflected in the art and the EP kind of reflects that growing pain and going through struggle under a lens,” Abhi said. The Superbloom EP encapsulates their goals as a group, making songs no matter the genre that reflect what the group is feeling at that moment. The project as a whole is slower, more emotional than some of their past music but the group has no regrets about that. “I think what makes this band special is that it’s always a combination of how each one of us is feeling. I want the band to be known for just being able to do what the fuck we wanna do,” said Abhi. “Sometimes people question the songs we put out or why we don’t make more of the indie type of music that we did before and it would be disingenuous to us to put something out that’s watered down or doesn’t feel right.”

Alongside the Superbloom EP, the group hosted the Superbloom festival at the Knockdown Center in New York City in late August, which was put together by the band themselves. The lineup included rap, indie and alternative music spread between two stages with Weston Estate closing out the festival. The groups and artists chosen were picked by the group themselves, who wanted to include artists that they are inspired by. Throughout the day at the festival, the members of Weston Estate were going from set to set, supporting the other acts, making sure everything was going smoothly and chatting with friends and fans. “It feels like a large family event and a brotherhood. We’re getting a free music festival too with the coolest lineup ever,” the band said when I spoke with them at the Superbloom festival.

With releasing music over many years, performing in many cities and hosting their own music festival, the collective of Weston Estate has already come a long way in their musical journey but in some ways is just getting started. For the rest of the year, they have more live shows planned and they are releasing more singles at shows with a higher level production than before. These shows will also take place at smaller, intimate venues to create a more special experience for their fans. Abhi says that it’s hard to be an artist but it’s much easier doing it with your best friends, making music that feels reflective and honest together. “I want people to look at us as the weirdest amalgamation of all kinds of people. We want to be reflective of the time; we want to be reflective of youth culture,” Abhi said. “The thing I want to be remembered for is that we took a chance, took a risk and we did everything we could to stay true to ourselves in our music.”

Words: Jessica Spiers

Photography: Derek Kwok