Hanni El Khatib announces new album + shares first single

HANNI EL KHATIB ANNOUNCES NEW ALBUM SHARES FIRST SINGLE VIA BUZZFEED MOONLIGHT DUE JANUARY 20 VIA INNOVATIVE LEISURE

Hanni El Khatib photo by Nick Walker STREAM: "Moonlight" - https://soundcloud.com/innovativeleisure/hanni-el-khatib-moonlight Pre-Order: Moonlight - smarturl.it/hekmoonlight Following the release of 2013's Dan Auerbach-produced album Head In the Dirt and its praise from the likes of Elton John, Morrissey and beyond, Hanni El Khatib is back today to announce his next full length and share its first single. "Moonlight," the album's title track, features breakbeat percussion, soulful riffs and space for things to get strange where Dirt would have found Hanni ripping straight through with reckless abandon. Check out the track and pre-order the album above and see below for more info about Moonlight as well as Hanni's upcoming tour dates. About Hanni El Khatib and Moonlight: On his 2011 debut Will The Guns Come Out, Hanni El Khatib tried something he'd never tried before -- making a bedroom-style recording of his then stripped-to-the-skeleton guitar-and-drums rock 'n' roll mostly for the sheer joy of making it. For his ferocious 2013 follow-up Head In The Dirt, he tried something new again, showing up at producer Dan Auerbach's analog-dreamland Nashville studio with nothing but the clothes on his back and an open mind.   But after Dirt's release and almost a year of relentless touring, Hanni knew he needed to go past 'unpredictable' all the way to 'unprecedented.' He needed isolation, time and the chance to experiment. So after 30 days locked in hand-picked L.A. studio the Lair, the result is the album Moonlight -- the rarest and most welcome kind of album, made at that perfect point in life where confidence, experience, and technique unite to help an artist do anything they want.   That's why it starts with a song that sounds like Mobb Deep beat under a Suicide-style synth drone and ends with an ESG-meets-LCD Soundsystem gone italo-disco song about life and death. That's why it collides crushing crate-digger drumbeats that'd be right at home on a Can LP or an Eddie Bo 45 with bleeding distorto guitar, bent and broken barroom piano and hallucinatory analog flourishes. (In fact, some smart producer is going to sample the drums from this album and complete the circle of life.) And that's also why Moonlight feels like the album he's always wanted to make: "What would it sound like if RZA got in the studio with Iggy Pop and Tom Waits?" he asks. "I don't know! That was my approach on everything." To make Moonlight, he needed the right engineer and the right place to record, the kind of place where they'd understand when he'd ask for '62 Slingerland drumkit and obsolete fuzz pedals. And he found it in the Lair and engineer Sonny DiPerri, whose pinpoint instincts and unassuming personality camouflaged an all-star resume including stints with Trent Reznor, Avey Tare and more. So on April 1st of 2014, Hanni sat down with live drummer Ron Marinelli and a selection of heavy friends to translate his best ideas to tape. As the album developed, Hanni found himself playing almost everything, switching from guitar to bass to synth to Mellotron-sometimes several times during the course of a song-and even sampling and re-editing Marinelli's beats. On "Mexico," he'd attach his own field recording of a funeral procession, made on a skateboarding trip through a tiny village in Mexico. On "Dance Hall," he'd be cheerfully yelling at Marinelli to "play weirder," until he got the krautrock-meets-dub song he wanted. On "Two Brothers," he'd recruit Rhye collaborator Tom Lea for a sparse disco song about life between two deaths, and on "Teeth" he'd smashes out a Motown-gone-stoner rock song that's positively hypnotic. It's a personal album in the most primal sense, put together in any way that worked. Iggy Pop and David Bowie did this kind of thing on The Idiot, the Wu-Tang Clan did it on 36 Chambers and the Clash did it three times over on Sandinista. And now it's Hanni's turn, across 11 new lightning-struck songs, each written and recorded in its own flash of inspiration. It sounds like an album made by an endless list of collaborators, but really Moonlight was more like the first do-it-almost-all-yourself music Hanni ever made, except after six years recording and touring, he'd learned to do so much more. "My approach is still the same," he explains. "Do things you've never done before. Challenge yourself. Be free and be creative. The same thing holds true for everything I've ever done, whether painting or design or skateboarding or whatever. Do it for the right reasons-exploring yourself. That's what it's about."  Tour Dates 10/21 Los Angeles, CA - The Del Monte Speakeasy presented by KCRW & Red Bull (RVSP here) 10/24 New York, NY - ADA 21st Birthday Bash and CMJ Showcase w/ Danny Brown, Zola Jesus, The Juan Maclean (RSVP here)       Hanni El Khatib Moonlight January 20, 2015 (Innovative Leisure) 1. Moonlight 2. Melt Me  3. The Teeth 4. Chasin' 5. Worship Song (No 2)  6. Mexico 7. Servant 8. All Black 9. Home 10. Dance Hall 11. Two Brothers