Basement’s Best: Hanni El Khatib asks “What if?” on “Moonlight”

“What would it sound like if RZA got in the studio with Iggy Pop and Tom Waits?”

While this pipedream of a supergroup is a technically viable affair, outside of some sort of one-off, “We are the World”-ish charity sing-along that may or may never come, we’ll have to take what we can get. Allegedly acting with this “what if, man” collaboration in mind, garage toughie Hanni El Khatib’s “Moonlight” is going to have to fill that never-was void until the next major natural disaster strikes a third world country.

Writing and recording the album during a month-long residency at LA’s Lair studio, El Khatib comes out sounding mad with cabin fever, prickly and ready to fight. Though some of the fuzz of his bedroom laptop beginnings has been pared, “Moonlight” is still gasoline-slick and swaggers on octane fumes.

Low-ceilinged, the record is bathed in never-too-big garage atmospherics, though those looking for glue-huffing, power chord riff-rocking should try down the block. El Khatib’s freewheeling instrumentations and arrangements follow a rabbit’s path, zigging from hip-hop voodoo, zagging to leisure-suited disco.

The titular opening track struts along with fists clenched, and smacks of Dan Auerbach. This isn’t so surprising, considering the ubiquitous producer oversaw El Khatib’s previous record, but the influence remains palpable. The pummeling, hypnotic beat may as well have fallen off the backside of the Black Keys’ hip-hop experiment, “Blakroc,” and even El Khatib’s voice bears an uncanny similarity to Auerbach’s sneering howl.

A few cuts later, “Chasin’,” a dirty soul number, nails a wrong-side-of-town vibe, and siren-like horn bursts do little to ease the tension. Going the furthest out with “Two Brothers,” El Khatib puts his experimental ethos on the line. After a minute-and-a-half of circular Afrobeat bump, a walloping tom fill crosses the threshold and sends the song straight into an extended, platform-shoe-tapping nightclub jam.

While the album’s other left-turns may not be as sharp, “Moonlight” is most pleasing when El Khatib drops the leather jacket act and indulges these flights. So while we sit on our hands, waiting for the deliverance of a RZA/Pop/Waits trinity, we’ll at least have something to chew on.

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