Getting Lost in the Alien Zoo with Homemade Spaceship [Exclusive Interview]

Homemade Spaceship has always drifted in space somewhere between a wormhole and a daydream, and his latest chapter proves he has no intention of touching down. Denver-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Rob LeVere, known for his signature blend of gritty bass, cosmic storytelling and live flute riffs, returns with special December tour dates and a new five track EP: Humans at the Alien Zoo. 

On December 4th, 2025, the same day as the release, Homemade Spaceship headlines Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom for a two-room, dual-stage takeover featuring Spades, Terrawave, Project Aspect, and Duality in the Ballroom and Evalution, Ossien, re:chase, and LUC on The Other Side, transforming the venue into a full-blown space station for bass and chaos that perfectly mirrors the wild universe behind the EP.

Blending raw energy, intergalactic imagination and a sense of adventure ripped from a sci-fi fever dream, Homemade Spaceship makes music that drops listeners into a world where getting lost is the whole point. We sat down with Rob to talk about the weird and wonderful lore fueling this project, why Cervantes feels like home base, and what fans can expect when the aliens finally open the gates to the zoo.

Listen to the latest release while you read the interview

WonkyWilla x Homemade Spaceship Feat. Def3 – The System by Homemade Spaceship

Floating In Orbit with Homemade Spaceship

Kaylee Leitzel, Electric Hawk: So I usually start my interviews this way, but where did the name Homemade Spaceship come from?

Rob LeVere: There are kinda two parts. It’s mostly about this idea that everyone has something that lets them escape the gravity of real life. Something that takes you to your own happy place. For me, that’s music. It feels like a spaceship I built myself. It’s mine, it’s self constructed, and when I’m in it I don’t feel the pressure of things like taxes, schedules, or any of that. I think everyone has their own version, whether it’s knitting, surfing, or whatever pulls you out of the world for a bit.

And I’ve always been obsessed with outer space. When I was a kid, I used to check out every book about planets from the library. One day the librarian told me space goes on forever and ever and ever, and my second grade brain basically exploded. That feeling never left. I try to make music that gives me that same sense of wonder.

One day the name came to me and I thought, that’s it. Homemade Spaceship. It fit perfectly with my obsession with space and how music feels like a vessel I created.

KL: If you had an actual spaceship, what’s the first thing you’d do?

Rob: If I had a real spaceship? I think I would just take off. No destination, no plan, just blast into space and get lost on purpose. A lot of my music kind of hints at that idea. When I made Ghost Ride the Spaceship, the concept was a guy who builds his own ship, launches to get away from everything, slips into a wormhole by accident, and suddenly he’s somewhere completely random and totally lost. At that point he can’t go back, so he just accepts it and explores whatever’s out there.

So yeah, I’d pick a direction and go. Space is full of things we don’t know about and I’d want to see all the weirdness for myself. It reminds me of Carlie and The Great Glass Elevator, the sequel to Willy Wonka. They’re basically drifting around space running into all kinds of strange creatures and situations. Awesome book, but surprisingly sad.

KL: Your name comes from this idea of building something yourself and escaping reality. If someone wanted to build their own metaphorical spaceship, what’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from building yours?

Rob: I think it starts with pulling from the stuff that inspires you. Take all the things you love, toss them in a blender, and shape them into something you feel like the world doesn’t have yet. For me, music is that outlet. It’s this mix of everything I’m obsessed with, pushed into a direction that feels a little risky. You don’t always know what you’re making, and that’s part of the fun.

I think everyone needs something like that. Some hobby or creative thing that’s this mashed up version of everything they love. Something you can always go back to that feels like yours.

But if you meant a real spaceship, then… probably a lot of explosives and weed.

KL: For people discovering your sound and energy for the first time, how would you describe it? Your project, your vibe, all of it.

Rob: I like to think I make a colorful, adventurous style of bass music. Less club focused, more like laying in a field under the stars with your imagination running wild. Big dreamer energy. Big stargazer energy.

At the same time, I like things dirty, grungy, and a little sloppy. Kind of the way Nirvana felt in the 90s. I’ve never wanted my music to be clean or polished to death. I grew up on metal and hardcore, so high energy stuff has always felt necessary to my brain. It’s what pulls me in.

So I try to make music that tells a story. Something adventurous, high energy, fun, and sometimes deeper than you expect. My bio says I make music for anyone who wants to stargaze or headbang, and honestly, that still feels pretty spot on.

KL: A lot of artists usually mention other artists when they talk about influences, but since you love video games, is there a game or soundtrack that’s influenced your sound in any way?

Rob: Oh absolutely. Final Fantasy X is one of my favorite games ever. I always connected with Tidus. He’s this scrawny tall kid who gets thrown into a mess he never asked for and ends up on a journey he can’t turn back from. That idea of being launched into an adventure you didn’t expect has always stuck with me.

And the music in that game is unreal. There’s a track called “To Zanarkand”. The first time I heard it, they’re all sitting outside what used to be Tidus’s home a thousand years in the future. Everything’s destroyed, and that song is playing. It gave me intense chills. Nobuo Uematsu is a genius.

That mix of beauty, emotion, loss, and the feeling of stepping into something huge and unknown still hits me. It definitely feeds into the adventure side of my music. That game and that song are huge influences for me.

KL: You play both guitar and flute, which is pretty rare for a lot of EDM artists. How did that combo happen?

Rob: I’ve been playing guitar, bass, drums, and keys since I was about twelve. I wasn’t exactly popular in high school, so I hung out with the ska kids. We’d meet in my friend Ben’s garage every day after school and just jam. We all swapped instruments constantly. My main one was guitar, but we’d rotate like, your turn on drums, my turn on bass. Doing that taught me two things: playing an instrument really well takes serious dedication, but being able to play one at all is actually not that hard. You can bust out a riff without years of training.

As I got older, my music drifted toward a hip hop, grunge rock kind of sound. I’m inspired by Wu Tang, Big L, Large Professor, Bone Thugs, even Lil Wayne. A lot of that Boom Bap era has flute in it. One day I was digging through sample sites looking for flute loops and everything sounded terrible. None of it was what I wanted. And I had this moment like, I’m an adult with an Amazon account and YouTube. I can just buy a flute and figure it out.

So I did. It took a couple months and a few lessons before I could play what I wanted, but learning new instruments hits that self improvement itch for me. It boosts my self worth and gives me something to focus on besides the void.

And the flute just felt fun. It has this vocal quality and melody that works really well live. Keys didn’t excite me the same way. Playing flute on stage is tricky sometimes, but it brings me a lot of joy. I’ve spent my whole life playing instruments, so why not bring that to the stage too?

I basically just woke up one day and thought, if fifth grade Timmy could learn flute, I can figure it out. Watched a ton of YouTube tutorials, put the time in, and now I get to feel like Ron Burgundy on stage.

KL: What year did the Homemade Spaceship project officially start?

Rob: If you dig through the SoundCloud archives, I’ve been posting music for about fifteen years. But I didn’t start taking it seriously until around ten years ago, when I started playing real shows. If you really want to deep dive into my early electronic stuff, there’s an old SoundCloud called Raptor Air Force with a picture of the Toronto Raptor doing a slam dunk. Those are my earliest, absolute trash beats. So if someone’s just starting out and needs proof that no one is good at first, that page is right there waiting. But yeah, fifteen years messing around, ten years taking it seriously.

KL: You do way more behind the scenes than people realize. You make music, you play instruments, and you also master other people’s music and teach classes. What is that like?

Rob:  A big reason I do all of that is honestly because I’m highly unemployable [laughs]. I’m late, I hate being told what to do, I hate going to the same place every day. I’m a terrible traditional employee. So I had to diversify to survive. Lessons, Patreon, mixing, mastering, producing for people, writing songs in totally different genres, whatever keeps the lights on. In a perfect world I’d just play shows every weekend, but that’s not reality.

Mixing and mastering fits me because I have this perfectionist vibe where everything has to be clean, organized, and in place or I feel weird. I hate resonant frequencies, messy sounds, anything that feels off. Fixing things is therapeutic for me. It’s like meditation. Making a song sound perfect scratches a very specific itch in my brain.

Teaching gives me a totally different kind of fulfillment. A studio in town hired me to teach their Ableton course, and it turned into something I really love. Building relationships with students makes me feel like I’m actually contributing something meaningful. I always joke that nobody writes a beautiful piece of music and then hops on Facebook to argue with some stranger about politics. Music pulls you out of that nonsense. If I can help people make music, that feels like I’m doing something good with my life.

Rob: As for producing for other people, part of the reason I love it is because I’m not actually a huge electronic music person by nature. What drew me to electronic music was the freedom. I can make whatever I want by myself. I can twist sounds, reverse them, bend them, turn washing machine noises into basses. That ties back into the Homemade Spaceship DIY idea. It’s all scrap parts and stolen parts and weird little pieces I glue together.

Before this, I played in emo bands and hardcore bands. Songwriting in that world is totally different. You noodle on a guitar until something inspires you, then you build around it. You play it so many times you finally go, okay, I have to record this. Electronic music flips that. You record everything immediately, so even your worst idea gets captured. Producing other genres keeps my perspective in check and helps me decide what ideas are actually worth keeping.

And the truth is, to make it as a musician these days, you kind of have to do everything unless you blow up. When I was twenty I worked in studios in Chicago and thought I’d be a recording engineer, but home studios changed that whole career path. Eventually I left Chicago, moved to Colorado, and had some rough circumstances in Durango that pushed me to say screw it, let me just go all in on electronic music and move to Denver. 

Now I do everything. It keeps me busy, it keeps me afloat, and honestly, when I get burnt out on client work, it makes me excited to come back to my own music.

KL: How is it being an emo kid in 2025?

Rob: [laughs] Honestly, call it being a senior citizen, but I love it. The old emos are everywhere. They come crawling out of the shadows whenever I play my Panic! at the Disco remix or my Chiodos flip. And there’s still great emo music coming out today. In Denver, Relate is an awesome pop punk band. Arm’s Length is incredible. If I Die First is another great modern emo band. The scene never died.

I love blending my electronic world with my emo roots. A lot of my music already has that emo tint, but sometimes I just go full emo with remixes. Seeing people sing along is the best. Emo breakdowns and dubstep drops are basically the same energy, so it makes sense so many of us took the emo to EDM pipeline. I’m definitely a product of that. It’s fun bringing those worlds together.

Chiodos – The Words Best Friend Become Redefined (Homemade Spaceship x Spades Flip) by Homemade Spaceship

HUMANS AT THE ALIEN ZOO

KL: Your last EP was Ghost Ride the Spaceship back in 2023. How have you or your sound changed over the past two years?

Rob: Ghost Ride the Spaceship was a huge project for me. I wanted it to show the full spectrum of what I do. The first half is fun, heavy, beat driven, very “let’s go.” Then after the interlude, I shifted into the prettier, more reflective stuff. Music you sit with instead of dance to. I even ended it with an eleven and a half minute weird trip hop piece, which I loved. In the lore, the interlude is them getting sucked into a wormhole by accident, and that long Voyager track is them willingly jumping into another one just to get even more lost.

With Humans at the Alien Zoo, I wanted a totally different vibe. This one is fun, reckless, party energy. More danceable, more chaotic, more goofy. The lore picks up where Ghost Ride left off. Build a spaceship, blast off, get lost, see beautiful stuff, decide to get even more lost, and now we’ve been picked up by aliens and thrown in an alien zoo. It’s stupid in the best way. Silly, grungy, upbeat, and not meant to make you feel somber at all.

The next EP I’m planning will swing in the opposite direction again. Something more emotional and in depth. I like bouncing between worlds like that.

KL: Your newest EP is called Humans at the Alien Zoo. What inspired that name?

Rob: The title is heavily inspired by one of my favorite books, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. In that story, the main character, Billy Pilgrim, jumps between different points in his life. One moment he’s in World War II, the next he’s a kid, then he’s an orthodontist, then he’s literally a human in an alien zoo. He just keeps waking up in different timelines with no control over any of it.

The whole message is basically, this is your life, this is what’s happening, so it goes. I love that line so much I have it tattooed. And what’s funny is Billy actually enjoys the zoo. He gets treated well, he gets fed, he’s got another human with him, the whole thing is weirdly pleasant. That vibe matched what I wanted for the EP. If I ended up in an alien zoo, I’d be like, cool, watch me make beats. I’m chilling.

But I also just thought it was a fun, absurd concept to play with. Something silly, not serious at all. The idea of aliens showing their kids like, look at the human, what a funky little creature. That tone fit perfectly with the EP, so I ran with it.

KL: Do any tracks have a story behind them?

Rob: This EP is way less about storytelling and way more about goofy vibes. On Ghost Ride I leaned hard into narrative. On this one, I just wanted to capture feelings. Dun Dun Dun, the first track, is literally called that because the first three notes go “dun dun dun.” It’s stupid in the best way, bright and fun, and that was the whole point.

The second track, which ended up being called Billy Pilgrim, is also goofy but in a house direction, something I hadn’t really tried before. Latitudinal Drip has this agile, bouncy feel to it. Set It Off is heavier and thicker, kind of the opposite. PaperWeights has this aggressive edge. They’re all different energies rather than full stories.

The entire EP is more like, oh great, I ended up in an alien zoo, so let me just lean into the chaos and have fun with it. That was the guiding feeling more than specific narratives.

FUTURE SIGHTS and HEADLINE SHOW

KL: You have an upcoming headline show at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom. Are there any special surprises?

Rob: I always build a story into my headline shows, I like them to feel like they have an arc. The big thing I have planned is an abduction scene at the start. The lasers are going to lock in on me like I’m getting beamed up, then everything blasts off. 

Fun fact, but I was actually terrified of the thought of alien abduction as a kid. I used to duck under windows on the way to bed because I thought they’d snatch me…Now I’m like, please take me [laughs], it’s probably cooler out there. But yeah, the theme is definitely space abduction. 

Other than that, it’s just going to be a super sick night. It’s a dual venue setup at Cervantes, which is one of my favorite places on the planet. The sound is insane, and it always has this laid back, community vibe. You can bounce back and forth between sides and it feels like a mini festival on a Thursday.

Both lineups are stacked. Terrawave opens, then Spades, who’s a good friend and brings high energy bass. On the other side you’ve got Evalution with his guitar driven set, and then his younger brother Ain, who’s out here making wild big band swing dubstep jazz. The kid is insanely talented.

So yeah, even without some giant stunt, the whole experience is going to be ridiculous. The production, the lasers, the dual rooms, the whole flow of the night.

KL: It’s gonna be sick.

Rob: It’s gonna be so sick.

KL: You touched on this a little, but for a lot of people in Denver, Cervantes is a special place. What does the venue mean to you specifically?

Rob: Coming from Chicago, the contrast was huge. There, you either had venue shows where security could get aggressive, or you had rave culture where people were more free but it wasn’t a formal venue. I watched security in Chicago throw people out, shake people down, even threaten to call the cops. You couldn’t even smoke a joint outside without risking getting tackled. So when I moved to Denver and experienced Cervantes, it blew my mind. People were just hanging out, doing their thing, and the staff wasn’t hostile. They were respectful even when they had to kick someone out. It felt safe in a way I hadn’t seen before.

When I started playing there I did the Electronic Tuesdays DJ battle twice and people noticed me. They were like, why are you playing funky glitch hop at a dubstep night? You should be opening for this person, or you should check out that event. Mikey Thunder especially helped push me in the right direction. Cervs gave me opportunities I never expected.

What really sets Cervantes apart is how open its scene is. In Chicago at the time it was either dubstep or house, nothing in between. Cervantes gave nights to electro soul, glitch hop, bass, everything. It pulled all these little pockets of the Denver scene together instead of keeping them separate. People actually hung out, supported each other, and moved between genres. It felt like a unified community instead of cliques.

The staff is approachable, polite, and just genuinely good people. I’ll never forget selling a bunch of tickets for a show and someone from Cervs saying, dude, you should headline. They believed in me before I did.

So for me, Cervantes is a welcoming, supportive home base. It’s a place that brings people together, gives chances to local artists, and creates a real sense of community. It changed the way I saw music scenes and made Denver feel like home.

KL: After Cervantes and this EP release, what comes next?

Rob: There’s some other releases I’m excited about. I’m hyped on the Wonky Willa collab that just dropped. After the EP, my next release is a Snakes on a Plane themed track with Import and Big Nut Shock. And I’ve also got a Babe I’m Gonna Leave You dubstep flip with Jason Leech coming. So lots to look out for.

And yeah this is the end of the Maddy O’Neal tour. Thursday (12/4) is Cervantes, Friday (12/5) is Grand Rapids with Maddy and Marvel Years, and then Chicago on 12/6.

During this interview, Rob referenced so many books that it had to be cut from the write up or else it would have been 25 pages long.

Here’s a list of some of the books and stories that fuel Homemade Spaceship’s imagination, songwriting, and general existential chaos.

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