Last year Alex Zhang Hungtai, better known by his moniker Dirty Beaches, released the double album Drifters/Love Is The Devil which split its discs in the style of Bowie’s Low (and both were recorded in Berlin!) to incredible results. Beginning with Drifters’ familiar Suicide-meets-rock-a-billy cuts like “Casino Lisboa” (which landed a spot on my Top 10 Songs Of 2013) it shifted into the heart-wrenching ambient pieces of Love Is The Devil. It was a total breakthrough, but today Zhang Hungtai releases an EP of material from before that period. Titled Neon Gods Of Lost Youth it collects tracks recorded between 2006 and 2012. As a collection of rarities it jumps around a lot from the droning jam of “Neon Gods & Funeral Strippers” to the hissy, lo-fi blues rock of “??(Featuring The Offset: Spectacles),” but they all share the common theme of being about, as he puts it, “childhood memories, folklores (about the haunted Xinhai tunnel) and fictional characters … that were a tribute to teenage delinquents in 80’s/90’s Taiwan/Hong Kong blockbuster gangster films that I grew up watching. Damn those movies were good…” The EP is dedicated to “the lost memories of youth and Taiwan.” Stream it below.

Neon Gods Of Lost Youth is out now. Buy it via Bandcamp, and read our Q&A with Dirty Beaches here.