home | HANI ABBASI

WELL HELLO

I'm Hani, a singer, guitarist and drummer, primarily focused on songwriting. I was brought up in Ilkley, a very twee, pretty, English-y town in West Yorkshire, full of victorian architecture, fascinating industrial history and rich in natural beauty, all of which I made great use of as a child by obsessing about Michael Jackson, Bruce Lee and Nirvana.

I started playing in alternative rock bands and composing music in my teens. Initially I excelled at creating energetic modern rock instrumentals and writing highly personal lyrics, but did not think to combine the two even though I could sing reasonably. Instead I opted for dumping this task onto a ‘singer’ type and giving them the silent treatment when I was unexcited by the results.

Many moons and genre-smashing production ideas later, I relocated (ran away) to a Chinese city called Suzhou, an extreme cocktail of ancient and futuristic buildings, and became a regular of the music scene out there, and inadvertently, a singer. Life settled into a groove, all of my tightly wound British knots were loosened, endless parties and gigs were had, and my pretentious arty ideas were rudely interrupted by the writing and recording of my late debut LP The Polar Route. It was produced by myself and dear friend Blayne Duffy who, though we met in China, grew up down the road from me in Greater Manchester. The album was our chance to marry our love of Low-era Bowie with some inevitable britpop and grunge spirit, all in our own unique recording locations in Suzhou. Whether we achieved that marriage or not is at the listener’s discretion but lord knows we got married to those songs. The colourful multi-faceted art design of The Polar Route was done by my excessively gifted Karachi-based cousin Ali Asghar, owner of Paperwork and Elomano Design. Live videos and music videos were created by fellow singer type Jim Peakman, director and owner of Bader Media Entertainment. Although the art rock make-believe of The Polar Route was the lynchpin of my life at the time, Duff and I produced many other projects together including the outstanding pop-punk outfit Johnny Utah And The Utards, which also featured my brother Danny on drums.

I then had the pleasure of returning to old Blighty and becoming pedantic and moody again. The Polar Route was released and supported with UK shows, frequently being labelled as 'futuristic' or 'mature' Britpop. Luckily I got to join the Manchester indie rock veterans Proud Mary (the band Noel Gallagher produced when he started his own label) as their drummer. I toured with them around the UK and Europe several times, opened for Magma at Carcasonne Festival, recorded an album in Majorca, had intellectual chats with groupies, and continued work on my second album When In London.

I flew back to Suzhou to produce 'London once again with Duff, opting to record in an underground bunker of a studio called Utopia Lab. Recording sessions for When In London were long and intense, with my brother providing drums for the prog-rock drum’n’bass style freakouts. The musical agenda was funky, industrial and organised, the lyrics hedonistic and self-deprecating, and my friendship with Duff just about survived the long mixing process. On finishing the first album The Polar Route we felt we’d created a colourful ride that had a certain relief and feel-good factor. When we finished When In London we didn't have a clue what the hell we made or why we made it, which, for an album so obsessively precise, is bizarre, and the same can be said for the artwork for which I once again worked with Ali Asghar. With When In London we aimed to make a pessimistic/atheistic set about living-for-yourself, a topic seemingly on the rise amongst writers; as the brilliant Kae Tempest put it in Let Them Eat Chaos : "The myth of the individual has left us disconnected, lost, and pitiful". To put it my own goofy way, I do believe the term ‘acceptance’, which is socially vital to some, is habitually used by others where the term ‘belonging’ would have been more appropriate. I attempted to let the issue of self-importance come to a head in a song called 'Stars Aligning', originally entitled 'The Family Way' (until I found out what the slur 'the family way' actually means!). ‘Subway To Heaven’, the album's love song, was written on the back of my morbid fascination with the rise of polyamory. I found most of the songs on When In London difficult to perform at first, and have only begun to make sense of them recently following a few turbulent years of life in London.

So, whilst incubating the When In London material soon to be released, I’ve also been hard at work on The Departure Lounge, Under Pressure vs. Under Attack, Simpler Chimes, Get Out Of Debt, and Songs For The After-Party (UK), largely because I don't bother anymore with viewing my albums as time-period capsules since that has never really been the case. 'After-Party begun its life before The Polar Route. The Departure Lounge is a bunch of spiritual songs, though attempting to be a bit spiritual with music ricocheted and gave birth to another two albums Under Pressure vs Under Attack and Simpler Chimes. Get Out Of Debt is a tale of spiritual life, financial life, and a deadly Yorkshire river (all things prevalent throughout my life). I will release them all in the near future, though songs from all of them are being performed live currently anyway. Once all is said and done, I look forward to going bald, wearing blue jumpers, and moving on from being a singer type. Re-training if you will.

Hail Bjork, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Manic Street Preachers, J Dilla, Underworld, Stones, Buena Vista Social Club, jazz music, classical music, hip-hop, ambient music, sufi music, and folk music from around the world. And above all else, crap pop music. I'm driven by lyrics and manipulating musical structure and form. My two favourite bands as a teen were Nine Inch Nails and Supergrass, and my signature banger 'Strange Snake' from The Polar Route sounds a bit like those two bands heavy-handedly smashed together.

If you would like to learn even less, come to my next show! Also check out my youtube channel for the various live configurations and bands I perform with. Thank you for reading my blurb-al diarrhoea, and have a lovely day.