Musician keeps it personal
Musician Alex Zhang, aka Dirty Beaches, tries to stay true to what inspires him, writes Doretta Lau
Alex Zhang Hung-tai, better known as the genre-defying recording artist Dirty Beaches, has had a tumultuous yet productive Year of the Dragon. The Taiwan-born musician quit a film project for political reasons, suffered a break-up, moved from Montreal to Berlin, and finished recording two full-length albums - to be released as a double album in May. He'll kick off the Year of the Snake with an Asia-Pacific tour that will bring him to Hong Kong for the first time on February 13.
"I recently gained a new viewpoint about life, about being an artist," says Zhang, who spent his high school and university years in Hawaii, before shuttling between San Francisco, Vancouver and Montreal. He had this revelation while speaking to his father about the new double EP, , which he says is "more electronic", and - he fears - perhaps less commercially viable than his previous works.
His father asked him if commercial success - which could require compromising his artistic vision - was what he really wanted. "I was like, 'I just want to make the music that I want to make'," he says. His father's response? "Why don't you just do that? If you're going to make music and be f***ing complaining about it, you might as well quit and come back to China and work in real estate with me. You'll make more money that way."
Zhang says: "[This made me realise] I am supposed to be making what I want to make and make other people accept it. This is the battle. I'm trying to survive. I'm not going to quit music - I'm not going to work in real estate ever again."
It's hard to imagine the charismatic Zhang, who has played in bands since 1999, abandoning his music - which memorably said "veers between doo-wop balladry and garage rumble, with the occasional interfering guitar drone, like an incursion into this forgotten past from a future Sonic Youth" - to work as a property agent or developer. "I make music for very selfish reasons because it's the only way I can function," he says.
"It's the only thing I'm good at. It's the only thing I've ever been complimented on. My whole life I've never really been good at anything and as soon as I started making music, it was the first time I realised people actually liked what I did. I've never been encouraged to do anything my whole life. It's kind of like validation for me. I have to write music or else I feel like I don't really exist or something."
