Last Lizard (Dirty Beaches’ Alex Zhang Hungtai) – “Dickie’s Theme” & “Detroit (Excerpt)”
The Taiwan-born, Montreal-based musician Alex Zhang Hungtai spent years releasing murky, enigmatic, retro-leaning music under his Dirty Beaches alias, but he announced last month that he was done making music under that name. He also promised “NEW PROJECTS NEW MUSIC COMING SOON 2015,” and today, we get to hear a bit of the first of those projects. Today, under the name Last Lizard, Hungtai posted two tracks to Soundcloud. Both “Dickie’s Theme” and “Detroit (Excerpt)” are atmospheric, impressionistic jazz, and they seem to be made from layering saxophone flutters all over each other. Hungtai recorded at least one of those songs in Lisbon, Portugal, and he characterizes it as “Tenor Sax and Tape experiments.” The two songs sound more like Colin Stetson than like anything Hungtai made as Dirty Beaches, and you can hear them both below.
Dirty Beaches’ final album Stateless is out now on Zoo Music.