Eight questions with homeplanetearth

(c) Gina Hood

1. Who are homeplanetearth, and where did the name come from? Any cool merch ideas based on the name? (a short introduction)

Homeplanetearth are a four piece atmospheric indie band from Oxfordshire! We are, Josephine Panton, Thomas Panton, Gregory Holmes, and George Purnell. The name was a bit random actually; George brought a list of what seemed like a million names to the table, we went through all of them and then decided to not go with any of them and call the band homeplanetearth - the main reason being we all believe in a healthy planet, and equality across the globe! The abbreviation HPE allows us to do some cool things, but predominantly we use art provided by band members. Josephine is an aspiring artist so does the majority of the art/merch designs for the band.

2. Since forming you’ve had a productive and successful first year, including your upcoming slot at Truck Festival (congrats!) What have been the best bits? How has your experience playing in bands in the past contributed to HPE?

Thanks! We’re super excited for Truck obviously. I think some of the best bits have been some of the support slots we’ve done; when we supported JAWS at the Oxford O2 Academy it was just awesome to be supporting one of the bands that I (Thomas) listen to on a daily basis; and supporting ALXNDR at the same venue was amazing when we came out, it was the best show have put on to date and the crowd seemed to really enjoy it - was just a great feeling! To be honest though, we love all shows, one person or more, we just love playing. All of us apart from Josephine have been in a band/bands before, and i think that really helps with our cohesion as a band. But, also just the experience of playing live helps a lot anyway.

3. How is recording on the EP going? Where is it being recorded?

So we’ve recorded all the tracks now, and just need to mix the last two - one of which is coming out as a single on the 14th July! It’s very exciting! The beautiful thing with this EP is that it shows a massive progression for the band - we began recording the songs with 5 members which gave a much different sound for the first two singles, Phat Phil and Find Me; the final two songs are really quite different and show where the band are heading now we’ve had a reshuffle! We recorded the first two tracks with Robin from Neverlnd / Roberto Y Amigos, in his recording studio which was brilliant as he is a good friend and a very good technician/producer! The final two songs are being recorded at Thomas’ home studio (work in progress!) because the drums are predominantly electronic for these songs and we managed to find a really lovely sound for the guitar and synth through Gregory’s system.

4. How do you approach the process of creating lyrics and melodies, where does your inspiration come from?

It really varies to be honest with you. Sometimes Thomas will come to rehearsal with an idea that he has come up with, and we’ll all then develop it and usually it comes out completely different from the original idea. However, this can sometimes be Gregory’s idea which we can work upon! Some of the best songs we’ve written though have just been improvisation in a band rehearsal that we’ve then spent some time developing! One consistent though is that Josephine takes control of writing lyrics with a little help here and there from Thomas..oh and the drums, George generally does all the beats! Inspiration can be anything from an experience or an experience that others have had, or just something completely random! We never really plan it!

5. Who is your audience and how do you connect with your fans? Any crazy, fun, exciting stories are very welcome.

Everyone and everything! We write music and anyone can listen to it! We have social media pages (Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) which we try to reach out to fans/friends on, but we prefer to just see people and speak to them; too much is online in our opinion, human connection is much more important to us!

6. How have you found the experience of booking a string of dates to promote your upcoming EP with Tigmus? What are you going to do to prepare for the tour?

Tigmus are great, we’ve worked with them before and we’ll work with them in the future. Booking a bunch of dates in conjunction with our EP release has been really good for areas in which Tigmus are established in or have done shows in before as we can be pretty sure they’ll promote it really well! Some of the other places we had to go to other people, but predominantly we’re working with Tigmus at the moment. Practice, practice, practice, and have a load of fun!

7. What does your dream gig look like? Any bands you’d love to play alongside?

Dream gig, difficult! I think either a really small intimate gig with all our closest fans/friends (with good sound quality!!), or on the other end of the spectrum, headlining Koko in London with a sell out venue. I (Thomas) saw Half Moon Run there at a sell out show and it was just phenomenal, they were really emotional and grateful at how many people came out to see them, i’d love to experience that. Too many to name, but Foals have to be mentioned I think!

8. It’s a way off yet, but what are your plans and expectations for 2017 and the future?

I think our predominant focus is going to be to try and get on tour as a main support with a more established band, we’ve had interest in the past from some other bands so hopefully that will be something we can get on board with. Other than that, write music, do some gigs, and release more music, and probably go and gig in some other countries as well!

Homeplanetearth play a tour to promote the launch of their self-titled EP in September (more details on the release to come from the band). They're playing Oxford, Bristol, London and Norwich with more dates to be announced, tickets for all the shows available through us here.