The soundtrack to summer comes courtesy of lo-fi one man band Dirty Beaches, who Handsome Tours are proud to bring to Australia for the first time this February.
The brain behind Dirty Beaches is Alex Zhang Hungtai; a solo performer, sound-smith, and trans-Pacific nomad. Born in Taiwan, Hungtai has made Toronto, Honolulu, Montreal, and Vancouver his homes. Mixing a croon worthy of Elvis or Roy Orbison with drum machines and a fondness for found sounds and hypnotic loops, Dirty Beaches’ compositions are not so much stripped down as refined to their essence. Hungtai’s vocal enchants, and the yearning melodies draped overtop give as much a sense of haunting mystery as they do romanticism and wry humour.
Hungtai has released a slew of recordings, and in early 2011 released his official debut album Badlands. Half of the songs on the record are about leaving, being chased on the road and driving a burning car into oblivion. The other half is ballads and dirges laced with murder and lament. The tracks are coated in noise, echoed vocals and layered distortion. It’s the sound of waves against a picturesque shore, the silent rumble of a Chevy as it speeds by in slow motion. Sparse but condensed, relentlessly edging forward: this is music for locomotive travel, for racing through neon archways and into dusky tunnels.
Spend a summer evening with Dirty Beaches this February at the Tote in Melbourne and FBi Social in Sydney.
A sense of displacement, combined with an ear for cinematic sounds— particularly the eerie, stylized noir of David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, and Wong Kar Wai—fuels his work, which squeezes the sounds of early rock’n’roll and 1950s music through a lo-fi, distortion drenched filter.” Pitchfork
“If Ducktails reconfigured Beach Boys harmonizing into bleached, hazy drones and Washed Out performed a similarly wistful translation of 80s synth-pop, then Dirty Beaches take the dusty-leathered sounds of rockabilly and attempt an equivalent process.” The Quietus
Dirty Beaches – February 2013 Australian tour
Presented by Handsome Tours, Vice and Noisey. Tickets on sale now.
Sunday the 10th – The Tote, Melbourne
Tickets: www.handsometours.com, www.oztix.com.au and Oztix outlets
Monday the 11th – FBi Social, Sydney
Tickets: www.handsometours.com, www.oztix.com.au and Oztix outlets
