Hominid Releases ‘Sun Spots’ Single + Announces EP
Hominid is the musical project of Benny Jennings (he/him), a sound designer and composer based in Te Whanganui a Tara (Wellington, NZ).
Heavily influenced by UK IDM, electronica, and the fringes of club music, Hominid’s sound is defined by flourishing textures, tape loops, four-on-the-floor kicks, found sound, and field recordings. Drawing influence from artists like Four Tet and Djrum and the wider world of experimental electronic music and club music Hominid’s aim is to create beautiful but driving sound worlds that can bridge between headphone listening and the club space.
Hominid returns in 2026 with new EP Play Fighting (releasing digitally May 7 via Strange Behaviour) led by new single Sun Spots (releasing April 23.) The very first offering of Hominid’s plan to produce and release four EPs in 2026. Following his debut EP 2024’s Introvert//Extrovert and 2025 singles You Are Not A Wall Flower & Cyclic, Play Fighting flirts
with heavier sonic aesthetics than previous releases, there is a push-pull between sonic weight and harshness with the delicate and pretty. The EP will be accompanied by a set of full-length visualizers by video artists Alastair Grey & Ryan Eden Gray-Mcoy.
Play Fighting draws inspiration mostly from UK alternative electronic music, Four Tet’s influence is very deliberate in kalimba driven big-room track Sun Spots, while artists like
Djrum and Blawan inspire the push-pull of harsh broken industrial techno and beautiful clarinet and marimba instrumentals in Wind Chime. Moon Weight sees Hominid lean into an Aphex Twin-style IDM electro sound after calling previous releases “soft IDM”. Concluding the EP is a vinyl sample driven house track Said & Done which culminates in a Moodymann style bass grooves.
On the single Sun Spots, Hominid reflects, “I made this one in the midst of a very miserable Wellington winter last year while I was sick in bed with the flu. I think I was fantasizing just sitting
in my back yard in the sun. It came out as this big, playful kind of silly tune. I think Four Tet’s influence on this track is pretty on the nose but here’s a bit of Animal Collective psyche rock in there, and I think a bit of the Spyro The Dragon OST (1998). I sampled a drum solo as a sort of bridge, originally I was going to cut it up as breaks but the whole thing just slotted in so perfectly I left it as it was. Electronic music could do with a few more drum solos.”
On the Play Fighting EP Hominid says “I settled on naming the EP Play Fighting because there feels like there is a lot of sonic push-pull going on musically. I’m flirting with heavier more club driven aesthetics while also trying to maintain the sonic prettiness that I think defined previous Hominid releases. I think my track Wind Chime perfectly emphasizes this ethos. There is a push-pull between this harsh almost industrial techno sound with bursts of pretty acoustic instrumentation. Even the core of that track is this harsh gritty basslines & percs against field recordings of wind chimes cut and laid over the top as melody. I think these sounds don’t battle or clash with each other, they flirt, they play fight.”
He also says “There is not necessarily intentional connective tissue between these tracks, most of these tracks were made in momentary pockets of creativity over 2025 while I was working as the assistant to the sound designer of Avatar 3 and composing for some large scale contemporary dance shows. The first idea for Moon Weight started on the steps of St Lukes Arcade in Auckland while killing time before a Rival Consoles show. Said & Done is the result of an annual project I do
with my friend, where we pick up some records from the dump shop and try and make music only using samples from those records. The EP is a collection of who I was and how I was feeling in 2025.”
Photo Credit: Brynne Tasker-Poland
