Han Li is the musical side project of producer and general music aficionado Han Li, founder of the label HL Records. Formed in 2008, the music of Han Li can be described as a mix of alternative, hip-hop/rap, afro-beat,dance and post punk, along with elements of disco and other styles.

Han Li is known to write all the parts for all of his songs in his head and rarely touches an instrument during composition and is too fuckin pussy to perform any of his songs live.

He started his career in the NCEA music class at high school, Han Li said “I love music class, it inspires me to make wonderful music like this”. Han Li also said “K-pop was a major influence in my music here, especially Big Bang, they are my favorite, especially G-Dragon”. A blend of K-Pop and street jazz, this combination is even more puzzling due to the fact that Li is KOREAN and can actually spell Korea (not corea*) properly.

‘Han Li’ was recorded in the music room at Westlake with help from producers Han Li and Joseph Triphook. Han Li worked on some songs for more than two years, beginning in early 2008. In between recording, the band toured South Korea and China for three months in 2010,showing the band the powers of C-ROCK and K-POP.Han Li was extremely impressed with the style of the music and it evidently went on to later influence his music. Han Li used a wide variety of musical styles on the album, incorporating string arrangements and electronic music, pianos, jazz and the ondes Martenot, yet renewing their focus on guitars, drums and bass as lead instruments. The songwriting on ‘Han Li’ was more personal than that of Han Li’s other work, with a key lyrics being "Playing by the rules is such a drag, Thomas Langley is a fag" on the song "Better or Better" with singer Han Li describing it as his attempt to write “seduction songs”.

Days after announcing the album’s completion, Han Li released the debut album as a digital download that customers could order for whatever price they saw fit. The download’s commercial success is unclear, as the band declined to publicise their Internet sales numbers. However, based on Last fm scrobbles the album did poorly.

The album was met with critical acclaim, Rolling Stone stating “This guy shows promise, but i want more Sisters of Mercy type lyrics next time”. The album holds a metascore of 83 and featured on numerous critics end of year lists. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.