Years active 2005 - present Record label Zoo Music Role Musical Artist | Name Dirty Beaches Labels Zoo Music Music director Chop My Money | |
Occupation(s) Musician, songwriter, producer Website dirtybeaches.bandcamp.com Albums Drifters/Love Is The Devil, Badlands, Water Park OST, Seaside EP, Double Feature Profiles | ||
Dirty beaches the singer
Alex Zhang Hungtai (born September 4, 1980 in Taipei) is a Taiwanese-born Canadian musician. He currently makes music under the name Last Lizard and was formerly known as Dirty Beaches.
Contents
- Dirty beaches the singer
- Dirty beaches sweet 17
- History
- As Dirty Beaches
- As Alex Zhang Hungtai
- Collaborative albums
- Live albums
- Collaborative singles and EPs
- Compilations
- Soundtracks
- As Last Lizard
- Videos directed for other artists
- References
Zhang released several EPs and three albums as Dirty Beaches on cassette-only labels before releasing his fourth full-length, Badlands, in March 2011. Badlands, unlike Zhang's earlier work, included his vocals on most songs. The album was long listed as a nominee for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize. Drifters/Love Is The Devil followed in 2013, pushing further into no wave, electronic music, jazz and ambient territory.
In 2014 Zhang decided to end the Dirty Beaches project after releasing the instrumental album Stateless, on which he played sax. As Last Lizard, Zhang collaborated with jazz and improvisational musicians and released new solo pieces on Soundcloud, Vimeo and Vine. In 2016 Zhang released the instrumental piano album Knave of Hearts under his own name.
Zhang has also recorded original film soundtracks for several documentaries, including Water Park (2012) and Who Is Arthur Chu? (2017), in addition to directing music videos for himself and others.
Dirty beaches sweet 17
History
Dirty Beaches began as a one-man band, sometimes employing sampling, inspired by Zhang's longtime love of hip hop. In addition to his own years moving between countries and on the road touring, films are one of Zhang's influences, particularly those by Wong Kar-wai. Zhang said Wong's movies are "usually about the passage of time, and how in relation it distorts your relationship with everything else in life. The central Dirty Beaches character is a product of those experiences. Of someone traveling long distances in search of something, in exile, misplaced, with no home to return to." Zhang has lived in Taipei, Queens, Etobicoke, Honolulu, San Francisco, Shanghai, Vancouver, Montreal, Berlin, Lisbon and Los Angeles, among other cities.
Dirty Beaches has released work on record labels throughout the world since his first album Old Blood came out on Montreal's Fixture Records in 2007. Dirty Beaches has recorded and toured with musicians such as Dum Dum Girls, U.S. Girls, Ela Orleans and Xiu Xiu. In 2011, Zhang was able to leave a kitchen job to play music full-time. First touring solo, he then put together a live band with sax player Francesco De Gallo and drummer Jesse Locke. On tour, Dirty Beaches moved away from the sample-based rock n roll of Badlands to embrace a more improvised sound. In 2012, guitarist Shub Roy and electronic musician Bernardino Femminielli joined Dirty Beaches live and in the studio, and they remain members of the band as of 2013.
After the release of Badlands and a number of EPs and collaborations, Dirty Beaches recorded 75 minutes of new material in late 2012 and early 2013. One set of songs, Drifters, was begun at La Brique recording space in Montreal and features Zhang's vocals and songwriting, along with instrumental contributions by Roy and Femminielli and former bandmates De Gallo and Locke. Making use of live instruments- guitar, bass, keyboard, drum machines and saxophones- arranged into original loops, none of the eight songs include any samples of previously existent recordings, a change from Zhang's previous working methods. During the course of recording Drifters, Zhang's relationship of several years ended in Canada and he relocated to the studio of friend Anton Newcombe in Berlin, where he finished the record and also recorded Love is the Devil, an instrumental set of eight songs, in late hours when the studio was not in use.
Drifters/Love Is The Devil was released as a double LP, as well as on a single CD and in digital formats, by the Zoo Music label in May 2013. Dirty Beaches will tour Europe and other regions in spring and summer of 2013. Earlier in the year Dirty Beaches toured the Asia Pacific region for the first time.
In November 2013, Dirty Beaches played the All Tomorrow's Parties festival held at the seaside resort of Camber Sands, United Kingdom.
In August 2014, Dirty Beaches announced his 3rd album, Stateless, which would be entirely instrumental and released in November 2014.
In a series of tweets in October 2014, Dirty Beaches announced their breakup. In early 2015, Hungtai began releasing music under the project name of Last Lizard.
On June 4, 2017, Zhang appeared in the fifth, David Lynch-directed episode of the revived third season of Twin Peaks. Playing with Dean Hurley and Riley Lynch as part of the group Trouble, Zhang played sax in the scene. The song, "Snake Eyes," was issued as a single by Sacred Bones Records.