“I don’t write hooks,” he says. “I write doorways. You walk through or you don’t.” Visually, Hanzel cultivates what his creative director calls “honest decay.” Frayed cuffs. Hand-painted leather. A single silver earring forged from a melted-down padlock. He collaborates only with small, ethical designers—most famously the Oaxaca-based collective Mano Negra .
Yet he sells out theaters from Warsaw to Vancouver. Why?
Critics have called him pretentious (“a starving artist who chose the menu,” wrote one Pitchfork columnist). Others have questioned his use of African rhythms while living primarily in Europe—a charge he answers not with defensiveness but by releasing a live EP recorded entirely in Dar es Salaam with local taarab musicians, proceeds going to a community arts space there.