Home Body

Possibly the cutest music lovebirds out there, we were so excited to interview Home Body!

Just on the heels of finishing their latest 8-track output, Spiritus, the energy Eric and Haley evoke is truly infectious and delightful. Both took the time to take us through their history, creative processes and the musical dreams they have been cultivating on and off stage together for 13 years. Originally emerging out of the Western Mass music scene, this duo is a must see! Now, can we just be best friends already?!?!

Make sure to check the latest Home Body news and tour dates at the end of the interview as well as on all of their social media.

I N T E R V I E W

What’s the name of your band? What’s the origin of that name?

We’re Home Body, spelled with two words. We thought of the name as we were falling asleep one time, so for us, it’s a way to think about embodied comfort. Not so much a couch-potato stagnant “homebody” but an activated, dualistic, physical container for authenticity, “Home” “Body.”

What are the names of the band members?

We’re Eric Hnatow and Haley Morgan. Eric plays with Korg Electribes and a Korg MS2000 and Haley sings. Live, she also “plays the lights.” We’ve been sweethearts for 13 years and have had the band for the past 7 years.

What genre of music do you consider your work to be? Who are your major influences?

We’ve called it “fever-pop” or “electro shimmer-core” in the past, and other people have referred to it as “synth-sensual,” “humanistic electro-pop,” and “spirit bath magic” so go ahead and tell us what you think, ha! It’s definitely rooted in electronica, synth pop, new wave, new age and a fair dash of theatricality, experimentation, and improvisation. We’re inspired by the art our friends make and the landscapes we inhabit. Eric’s all-time favorite musicians include Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, NIN, The Knife, Arthur Russell, Marilyn Mason, and Pink Floyd. My longtime favorites are probably The B52’s, Jamiroquai, Annie Lennox, Bjork, Phish, and TLC so put all that in a stew, add some static electricity, a dose of Enya and Danzig, and it’ll probably taste something like Home Body.

What’s your ultimate direction for your band? Are you seeking fame and fortune?

We just want to be happy and healthy and keep expanding the scope and scale of our work. This band is the best platform for connecting with ourselves, each other, and strangers, and we don’t expect to stop, ever, unless it’s not fun anymore. At this point in our lives, it’s a necessary creative practice and outlet for processing the world’s weirdness. It feels good to take up physical and social space in the name of heart-centered positivity and left of center abstraction. We believe that playfulness is critical in cultural and social evolution. In a Home Body performance we try to utilize many modes of expression to connect with people as possible – having fans who are marginalized, or differently abled, or vision or hearing impaired, or who don’t speak English, or have high anxiety – whatever it is – we value their presence and experience so much, and try to extend ourselves towards them. That’s why we work so hard on our light show, our dance moves, our costuming, that’s why we try to be considerate about who we work with and the venues we’re playing and how accessible they are, etc. We want to keep traveling the world and spreading the Home Body vibe. Fame and fortune sound cool too, though!

Could you briefly describe the music-making process?

Eric: No, it’s top secret!

Haley: It’s always different, but it’s always a process of following delight.

What has been your biggest challenge as a band? Have you been able to overcome that challenge? If so, how?

Haley: The internet. Balancing the hype machine with the creative practice. Trying to translate a live, living, breathing and morphing vibe into a cool photo and caption and then watching the algorithms eat it up. Shifting with the constantly shifting virtual world. Feeling the power of our own potential and not having the energy to sit at a computer and pitch it to strangers. Remembering not to feel bad about how hard I’m working. Trying to remember to not trust social media to determine my worth.

Eric: It can sometimes be hard to have your ego and emotions tied up in this thing that you are constantly sharing with the world. It can get really emotionally draining. However, it also can have a really magical payoff. We try to keep our lives balanced and not 100% focused on Home Body at all times. After all, we are in a loving and committed relationship with one another. We always try to have that as a starting point.

During your live sets do you guys curate your dance moves for each song?

Some songs we have loose choreography that’s developed naturally after playing 400+ shows, but most of the time it’s improvised! We are both huge fans of modern dance and go to dancing performances as often as we can.

Where does Haley get her inspiration for her fashion sense on stage?

Haley: I wear things that make me feel in my own power. I love thinking about how the lights I’m manipulating live will translate on my body with fabrics and materials. So I’ve been loving gauzy white layers and shiny mylar moments. Also, I consider how shapes and cuts constrict, allow, or animate with my movement. I make all my own costumes (cheaply), and get bored of looks quickly (plus they wear out!) so I try to wear something different for almost ever show. I have a humongous collection of Home Body outfits from the past and present, it’d be fun to do a retrospective fashion show someday of all of them!

What advice do you have for people who want to form their own bands?

Haley: Do it, just start. There’s no one way and no wrong way to do anything! Follow your own delight and be playful! Make it up as you go along!

Eric: I love encouraging people to create music! I don’t think it is something that should be reserved for the stage, or records, or bands. Music is truly a healing and enlightening force, it really truly is. I think everyone should make music, regardless of if they have a band or not.

What is on your mind right now?

Eric: Food
Haley: Sex

This is your time to give your pal a shout-out, promote upcoming tours and albums or just say whatever you like.

We’ve been working on our second full-length album for the past 3 years and just finished it, ok’d the masters this week in fact! It’s called Spiritus, it’s 8 tracks, and it’s the best thing we’ve ever made, we’re so proud. We’re figuring out its release right now, talking with labels and all that, and truly can’t wait to share it with our fans. We think it’ll be out early 2019. It’s our most personal and expansive release yet, coming out of a surprising, challenging era of our lives. In the wake of so many cultural, social, environmental and political shifts, we’re grateful to have had this project to channel our energy into, tangles and all.

We’re currently focusing on getting all our ducks in a row for Spiritus’s release, like making music videos and designing new merchandise and plotting big tours, and we have a few secrets up our sleeves we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks. It’s an exciting time for us, for sure. We’re so lucky. Stay tuned!! - Audibl.wav

When I reach Haley Morgan by phone at home—which is fitting—she is stretching—also fitting—to prepare for a show later that night. Morgan is the singer for the Western-Mass.-based electro-art duo Home Body. Home Body play dance music, which is inherently about the body—moving the body, feeling and articulating rhythms in the limbs and hips, a physical correlation between the body and the music. The body is an important part of who and what Home Body are.

Clubby dance music can sometimes seem oriented toward physical pleasure, but the meaning of connecting with our bodies through sound and through organized movement is greater than just our ability to pursue or project physical desires. We learn to carry ourselves in space, to convey poise and grace and self-possession through movement.

“It’s so easy to become separated from our body or not think about it as something that you have agency over or to think about it as something that you can reinvent yourself through,” says Morgan. Not surprisingly, Home Body have made fruitful connections with the world of fashion and galleries, sometimes making their music specifically for settings that showcase the multi-media art potential of music.

Haley Morgan, Home Body, Massachusetts
Haley Morgan, Home Body, photo by Michael Kusek
Morgan and her partner Eric Hnatow met at Hampshire College in Amherst. The two were a couple for five years or so before they formed the band, with Morgan having a theater background and Hnatow having played in some industrial electronic bands in Ludlow and Palmer.

Morgan and Hnatow want their project to connect with people, and they put thought and effort into making their shows visual, interactive, kinetic, and stimulating. They’re into “the power of spectacle,” says Morgan. “We use sound, we use light, we use costuming, we use dance, just to try to figure different ways to hook people,” says Morgan.

The music strikes a nice balance between the synthetic and the organic. Hnatow gets the beats pumping along with mechanistic oscillations, handclaps, and robotic clicks and hisses. Sometimes the bottom-scraping synth bass lines sound as if giant kazoos were buzzing beneath the fabric of the mix. The glitchy and smeared sonic textures serve as a fitting background surface for Morgan to sing, intone, and blurt over. She has a rhythmic force and emphatic articulation to her singing. Her vocals—with growls, coos, yips and dips—can bring to mind a range of idiosyncratic vocal stylists like Grace Jones, Sinead O’Connor, Robyn, Bjork, Yoko Ono, and even Alanis Morissette and Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries. Home Body are working on a new full-length record, one that could come out by year’s end.

Home Body, live music, western Massachusetts
Eric Hnatow of Home Body, photo by Michael Kusek
Listen to Morgan on “Inner Red” from the duo’s most recent release, 2014’s Guts. “Bite your tongue and swallow it whole/No need to name it, your gut will know,” Morgan sings. Another song, “Something Tempting” has lines about “turn[ing] our bodies back on.”
There are ways of knowing that don’t involve the brain, and that’s seems to be part of this band’s point.

“I think that sound vibrations, the music that we make—sound is movement, and I think that sometimes life can get too heady, literally coming from our brains,” says Morgan. “There’s so much more that we can understand about the world around us if we employ all of our senses.” - Take

HOME BODY’s show at Brass Cat in Easthampton left me with a multiplicity of thoughts and feelings, but the takeaways of the show narrowed to two under-appreciated concepts: Easthampton is in fact an awesome hub for music, and electronic music can truly rock in a live setting. HOME BODY is a testament to inane rock purists: you don’t need to play a guitar or a drum kit to be a talented musician and melt faces at the gig. This act allows us to put that rhetoric to bed for good.

The setup of the show was split between Haley Morgan, taking over vocal duties, and Eric Hnatow, who handled the myriad of synths, samplers, drum machines, and sequencers. Morgan shouted and crooned infectiously through her mic, which was run through a Boss Vocal Pedal. She used the effects tastefully to produce otherworldly harmonies and vocal strangeness, all the while controlling the stage lights via handheld remotes. Morgan is a local lighting expert, the genius behind the truly awesome stage lighting of the Guerilla Toss show at Tubecats this past October. Hnatow was quite the force himself, manning all of his equipment with wizard-like craft in an impressive demonstration of coordination that could challenge any math rock drummer’s. He kept the physical foundations of the goth electronic psychedelia while Morgan complemented the songs beautifully, perfecting their dance mastery.

They were the only group on the bill, so they had ample time to play their litany of awesome songs, each one a unique behemoth with its own sonic palette and textural atmospherics. The tunes were in turn heavily complemented by the duo’s captivating stage presence; Morgan’s stage antics and the intimacy of their give-and-take stage movements made it known that despite its electronic origins, the music they were creating was coming from a raw, emotionally organic place.

I’m sure many people can relate to this: there is a special musical place in my head reserved for those truly beautiful musical moments that make you well up with undeniable, awesome goosebumps, and maybe even tear up. It’s a primal place where the abstract sense of self softens, even if just a little bit. It’s a cliche thing to say, but this performance took me there. After this HOME BODY show, we can do away with any purist qualms about electronica, because if what they do isn’t music, then I don’t know what is.

The Brass Cat is a sweet spot as a venue, a cozy but hip bar setup that was well attended that evening. Their beer choices were pretty great as well. Seeing this show made me realize how little I make it out to Easthampton despite the meager twenty-or-so-minute drive from Amherst or Northampton. It also made me appreciate how every single show I’ve seen there has been killer through and through, whether at Flywheel, Platinum Pony, Brass Cat, or any other venue. Easthampton promises to continue and increase in its standing as a true musical hub, and I highly advise everyone in the valley to pay hard attention to what is happening in that scene, because it is a big deal. Finally, if you’ve never seen HOME BODY, my response can only be to see HOME BODY! - Pioneer Valley Underground

Home Body drop their new EP Guts on June 1st; however, I’m not here to talk to you about that. I’m doing a PSA in support of their new single, “Tits To The Sky”. Let that sink in for a second. “Tits To The Sky”…could there be a better titled song this year? No, didn’t think so. I think we’d be a more peaceful nation if we kept our tits to the sky. Opinions??? Tits??? - Earbuddy

After releasing In Real Life last year, Massachusetts duo Home Body are prepping the release of their new Guts EP. To give us a taste of the five song set, Home Body has released “Tits To The Sky.” And with a title like that, how could you really go wrong? The track utilizes the same lo-fi electro-pop aesthetic found on their earlier music with static buzzy synths and a simple drum machine beat. But the real draw is Haley Morgan’s over-the-top vocal performance. Instead of the usual cool, unaffected singing of so much electro-pop, Morgan gives it her all with theatrical enthusiasm. On “Tits To The Sky” she even breaks into some orgasmic screaming at the end of the choruses. The song is an inspirational call to arms (call to tits?) about bravely facing the world.

Guts will be available on June 1st. Until then, be sure to check out some more music from Home Body. - The Absolute

“Homebody” is the charitable way to refer to a reclusive hermit, and by all outward signs, seems like a complete misnomer for Northampton’s electro-pop darlings Eric Hnatow and Haley Morgan. The duo’s band, Home Body, has recently embarked on an ambitious nationwide tour. The group is known for the dynamic blend of Hnatow’s hypnotic beats and synthesized melodies with Morgan’s inventive lyrics and powerful vocal stylings. Not to mention their energetic stage shows, and funky costumes. But after getting to know them, it turns out there may be some truth to their moniker.

Invoking a persona similar Peaches or Karen O, Morgan donned a mix of sequined jumpsuits and rainbow clothing at a recent performance at the tiny Rendezvous cafe in Turners Falls. She kept the crowd of about 50, cramped into the cafe-turned-concert-venue, transfixed as she swayed across the stage, sharing emotionally-charged lyrics delivered in soft tones, in harmony with Hnatow’s beat. As their first song came to an end and the audience seemed to be holding back, Hnatow yelled, “Get right up in my grill right now!” Then the fun really began.

While the Pioneer Valley has served as culturally fertile ground for spectrum-spanning artists, few are able (or even attempt) to bridge the gap between music and visual art as well as Home Body does.

Hnatow and Morgan met seven years ago at Hampshire College, where they both worked in the same building. “Basically, I developed a huge crush on Eric, who worked at the school store,” Morgan said. “I worked at the post office for my work-study job and they shared a hallway, so I’d always walk by and catch his eye, and I’d go into the store and buy a lot of Swedish Fish.”

Soon after, they began dating. Five years following their initial candy-filled flirting, they started making music together.

Hnatow has been experimenting with synthesizers and drum machines for much of his life. Morgan comes from a musical theater and dance background. “I experimented with a lot of things, but it was mostly movement-based. And then through playing around with Eric I sort of rediscovered this vocal itch that I had been neglecting to scratch for years and years,” Morgan said. “It’s been cool to hear my voice develop [and] feel more confident in it.”

Her growing confidence is apparent in Home Body’s performances and recordings. On Valentine’s Day, Feeding Tube Records released their full-length album “In Real Life” at a Northampton show which sold out in 30 minutes. This success has propelled the band into the touring life. Over the next three months, the duo is slated to play 62 venues across 29 states. Pioneer caught up with them as they packed their belongings and prepared to leave their Northampton home for the open road.

Home Body’s house is a minimalist’s nightmare. Hnatow and Morgan’s home is crammed from floor to ceiling with art they and their friends have created. The two spent their post-collegiate nights hosting art shows, inviting friends to set up installations in every room. After these shows, they explained, friends would often leave their work on display in the house, which has left practically no space uncovered. This work serves as particularly meaningful and sentimental decor in the form of countless personal mementos — kitschy and beautiful displays of the value they attach to personal relationships and the art that comes from them.

Home Body is big on drawing connections, whether it’s between each other in performance or their songwriting process. Their songs typically arise out of informal practices, and sometimes a beat that Eric created prior to Home Body will come up and form a new song. It all comes from a certain connection Hnatow and Morgan have between each other.

“There’s the practical side to how we make songs … and then there’s this intensely, deeply-rooted, emotional thing that’s very hard to explain to people that aren’t me or Haley,” Hnatow said. “The sounds that we use now, I’ve been working on for 15 years maybe … things get mixed around and they come up through this history of my life. There are things that are in those songs that I might have made six, seven years ago and I thought that it was just nothing, and then it resurfaces into my current songwriting practice and it sounds great now.”

At times, he said, these older pieces will catch Morgan’s attention, and she will write lyrics to overlay on the beat and create a new track. Their songs are a conversation between themselves spanning years, before they even met. “I think I’ve been working on Home Body for my entire life, from the second I was born,” Hnatow said. “It’s constantly shifting through time, it’s not defined by two years ago, when we started making music together.”

This concept of a musical conversation goes beyond the songwriting process. “Performance is a dialogue for us,” Morgan said. “We try structuring the whole experience of a Home Body show so it’s something fresh.”
In addition to vocals, Morgan works with lighting. “I don’t use fancy LEDs and I don’t use flashlights, I just use stuff from Home Depot,” she said. “Our setup might be small, but we definitely pack a punch with it.”

Though personal, the group’s connection between musical and visual art has left some confused after performances, Hnatow acknowledges. While packing up after shows, attendees have asked, “So was that, like, performance art?” Yet the duo said they aren’t that concerned so long as audience members had fun and enjoyed some aspect of their shows. The band’s complexity is one of their more intriguing elements. One can only hope that we in the Pioneer Valley don’t starve while Home Body is away on tour. - Pioneer Magazine

..."Also performing at the start of the night, Northampton duo Home Body provided an unpredictable half-hour set of distorted electro-pop. Featuring layered synthesizers, looped vocals and a half dozen “backup dancers,” Eric Hnatow and Haley Morgan slowly won over the early crowd with sheer force and energy. Morgan’s strong voice in particular was a highlight even when it wasn’t being modified, but it was Hnatow who almost stole the show with a raucous finale of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream.” - Valley Advocate

Home Body was up next, and like the band before them they were hard to miss. Vocalist Haley Morgan wore a full spandex body suit with silver tinsel fringes at the shoulder that flailed about wildly as she danced around the hall. Various lights were set up on the stage that she turned on and off with foot pedals while she danced, giving an almost disco feel to the proceedings. Her band mate Eric Hnatow occasionally joined her in choreographed dance moves when he wasn’t noodling with a keyboard, sampler, or sequencers, all of which were used ingeniously but sparingly enough to allow Morgan’s vocals to shine and help create their unique sound. Their performance is equal parts music and performance art, and they do both brilliantly.

Their music calls to mind bands as disparate as Washed Out, the Knife, Cocteau Twins, and Sleigh Bells. Morgan is an amazing vocalist, wowing the crowd with her pipes and prompting the crowd to demand an encore (when was the last time you saw a band playing at a bar get pressured for an encore?). - Chunky Glasses

Nowadays, making stimulating music is too easy. All one needs is a computer program and the ability to count a measure of four beats. Electronica is often flashy but void of originality. Home Body, on the other hand, does not hide behind its electronic equipment. The band features only two members, Eric Hnatow (keys) and Haley Morgan (vocals) who both live in Northampton as a happy couple. Onstage, they wear matching futuristic white jump suits like astronauts ready to launch a musical journey that takes the audience on an adventure through time and space.

The duo is both subtle and piercing. High end melodies warble dreamily from the keyboard and sequencer behind which Eric stands. The melodies he plays are reminiscent of theme songs from old-fashioned video games, slightly cartoonish in their grand delivery, and yet not goofy. Their songs are playful without being silly, and unreal without being alienating. The listener finds himself drawn into some delicate and emotional mold over which Haley unveils her beautiful chants, which are often unabashedly childish and sweet.

The duo spare no energy while on stage. This is so much the case that they leave the stage to immerse themselves with the audience, dancing not just through it but with it, trailing their mic chords through dancing feet. They excite the crowd with this breed of fearless showmanship, which is not cocky but in unison with the intensity of their music, in unison with the audience’s dancing and revelry. It is clear that despite their talent they do not take their audience for granted, but instead both members of the duo embrace the crowd as part of the show, whether it be Eric dancing with you as he plays his keys or Haley locking eyes with you as she sings. This creative freedom leaves no space for boredom or stillness, is an electric eruption that pushes the crowd out of its funk.

Haley Morgan does an incredible job of enticing her audience. Her warm voice pulls heartstrings, her tone desperate for establishing an affectionate embrace as she sings “The Jungle”:

“Allow me to introduce myself. I am in love with all of you.”

And it is that line that, for me, illustrates the magic of their music: it creates the meeting grounds for people to interact in a way that is both primally pulsing and yet warmly seductive, sweet and sexual, non-perverse in its implied encouragement of togetherness. With swaying synth beats bedecking the background of their music and drums that always seem to be on their toes, their music demands more than a head nod that follows the general beat; the listener becomes a facet of the music, guided by its wild movement into a frenzy of dance. I recommend that anyone check Home Body out as they bring a raw and yet minimalistic energy to the stage that leaves the audience begging for more.

The group has just returned from a tour that took them down the East Coast, joined by Jeremy Dubs and his band Speak! They have released a 7? inch record called Traps. It has one track on each side, and comes in a neat little package that includes the record sleeve, which was illustrated by Haley herself, as colorful and imaginative as their music. Enamored by anyone involved in the Northampton music scene, and possessing the passion to carry their act forward, they are sure to be a steadfast member of the scene, and to gain further popularity as they continue to spread their music. Check out their website: http://home-body.bandcamp.com where their first E.P. Fire Places is for sale, as well as their new 7” record.

–Ezra Prior is a Contributor to The Free George. Photo Courtesy of Home Body - The Free George

When Eric and Haley started making music as Home Body, it was all about making connections. They wanted to form a unique creative bond with their audience. So they merged their interests in music, art, dance, lighting, and costumes in the hopes of creating a truly immersive performance. And as a result, it is safe to say that Home Body’s brand of moody electro-pop is best experienced in person.

Still, even without the strobe effects, there is something to Home Body’s music that deserves attention. There’s an emotional shorthand on display in the lyrics and melodies, and an insular quality that mirrors their close relationship. And yet, Home Body is not a vanity project. Ultimately, Eric and Haley crave a community and are using their art to build one from the bottom up.

In a way, it makes perfect sense. If making connections is their ultimate goal, it’s fitting that Home Body proved to be the most popular entry and winner of the 2011 Verbicide Unsigned contest Readers’ Choice award.

Based solely on your press photos, I assume you met at a feather boa/face-painting convention. At what point did you decide to start making music together?
We had been sweethearts for five years before we started making music together as Home Body. Eric made lots of music before Home Body, and Haley made lots of art. Now we use Home Body as an outlet to do those things together, with each other as collaborators.

Try your hardest to describe a Home Body show using metaphors that have nothing to do with music.
You’re hiding in a manhole, ready to pop out and declare your love for the person of your dreams, as a colorful parade suddenly marches dances above your head, tossing all sorts of glittery goodies from their floats. You catch a palmful of magic as it falls through the streets, taste it on impulse, and are rewarded by a mouth feel of sweet sunshine. You feel a part of the splendor. You feel brave.

Or

You’re sitting on top of a mountain with your best friends in the whole wide world, watching the neon sunset, and to your left a lightning storm approaches. Flash! To your right, a bright comet passes. Whoa! The sun finally sinks below the hot pink horizon. You and your friends high-five, then light off fireworks. You dance with the pops and booms under the sky’s strobe lights.

Oftentimes a show is equal parts music and performance. Home Body looks to cross over into performance art. How much effort do you put into creating the right vibe for a concert, and how do you bring people into that creative space?
We like to make people feel special, like they are in the right place at the right time. Part of creating an experience like that for others includes being thoughtful about the physical space we are in, as well as the social space that we are sharing. We consider our lighting, costumes, and choreography just as important in our live performances as our sythesizers and pedals. We love how music can bring awareness to particular feelings, emotions, and movement, but we also love how spectacle can activate the imagination and ignite reaction.

How do you usually split duties on creating a song?
First, we fill up big glasses of water. Then we climb the stairs into our attic studio and close the door. Sometimes, but not always, we begin with an idea for the kind of sound, movement, or imagery we want to explore. Eric will fool around with different beats or sounds, and as Haley hears something she likes, she’ll start dancing. We’ll groove for a while, experimenting and dancing, and then Haley will improvise on the mic. We’ll catch snippets of melodies we like on a hand held cassette recorder, and then once our glasses are empty again we’ll go downstairs and review the collage of sounds, picking out what we like and what we want to keep working with. Next, Eric will polish the beats, Haley will write some lyrics, and we’ll keep playing around and setting the song.

You are both multi-talented artists outside of music. Do you have a creative “first love” or do you simply follow your muse?
It seems that most of the other art forms we create end up bleeding into our music in some way. Prints turn into shirts, album art, or flyers. Sculptures become part of our costumes. Ideas and thoughts we have about community and the world turn into lyrics, or become part of our stage persona. We feel lucky to be surrounded by a lot of interesting and creative people, who help to feed our fire and keep us inspired.

Most of all through Home Body, we are looking to create connections… connections to other people, places, movements, ideas, and so on. We’ve found music to be the ultimate way to connect with others, because it’s full of exchange, vibration, feeling, and expression. Not only is music very accessible, but it’s nearly impossible to avoid. It can be found everywhere.

Do you think it’s easier to collaborate because there are only two of you? Would you be open to adding other members to Home Body?
We share - Verbicide Magazine