Melodies On Hiatus, the new solo album from acclaimed vocalist, songwriter and guitarist Albert Hammond Jr of the Grammy-winning group The Strokes, is slated for release on June 23 via Red Bull Records—pre-order it here. Today, the first track, “100-99” featuring GoldLink, debuts alongside a video directed by Angela Ricciardi and Silken Weinberg— watch here.
“I grew up listening to 90s hip-hop, and I would always gravitate towards the melodic hooks in the songs I heard on the radio, specifically anything Dr. Dre was producing or rapping on,” Hammond Jr says about the new track. “Years later, I noticed myself pulling from the style of those melodic lines in my guitar work, even though it wasn’t obvious to anyone else as I was so directly associated with being in a rock band. ‘100-99’ was something I’ve wanted to do for some time—work with a rapper over a beat and guitar part I wrote—and it’s really exciting that I was able to do it with GoldLink.”
“When we first met with Albert, it was clear we were all on the same page: we wanted to have fun and we wanted to experiment with simple concepts that tell a deeper story,” Ricciardi and Weinberg say about the video. “The album is 19 tracks, it’s sprawling but interconnected in a special kind of way, and we wanted to maintain that visually as well. The five videos we made for Melodies on Hiatus take place in a series of rooms all within one larger space, different scenes that string together one very long night. Throughout the entire process, Albert was so open and kind, he trusted us, and it cultivated a really pure, almost psychedelic environment.”
