Dirty Beaches
Stateless

THE REVIEW

Stateless in the very sense of "without a state," because Alex Zhang Hungtai - undeniably the most handsome Chinese in the world - is a drifter, and many have already written about this.

Anyway, forget the old Dirty Beaches that reverberated rockabilly and sampled Françoise Hardy with aplomb while working on the samples and singing over them with his hoarse, baritone, deep voice; that is, forget the Dirty Beaches ambientbilly that combined an arty - artsy as they say in England - and synth-sampler approach, with vintage guitars, slick poses, noirness, and the beautiful vocal melodies of the past.

Remove the -billy and the 50's imagery, and take out the vocals too: what remains is the ambient, the soft-drone, and the art-crafting of this farewell album. Not a different direction: rather, an ascetic musical awareness that unties Dirty Beaches from any trace of worldliness, danceability, and catchiness, regressing him to a producer of formless noise-matter. Four tracks without a trace of beats: an immobile arithmetical ocean of harmonized layers that hardly deviate from the most dreamy and gaze trend in ambient practices. Hungtai launches and definitively leaves Dirty Beaches in a flourishing scene, but one saturated with suggestive and mannerist products, like I'm zen and I make you sleep, I have reverbs: download me. However, amidst this ambient sea of plenty, the depth, professionalism, and attention to detail expected from such a prominent name stand out well compared to the average quality of the scene, which is made up of homemade productions and a lot of craftsmanship. But the dark side of Stateless is acoustic nonetheless, as if Hungtai cannot completely give up on the real; we are told this, quietly and drowned in the synths, by the viola in Displaced, the accordion at the end of the title track, certain wind instruments, and even some key-pressing sounds. No glitches, however, and high-quality low frequencies that break you, see also the start of the eponymous track. And then, to distinguish it, there’s also a mystical oriental air, something that doesn’t quite explain itself, but it’s clear it’s there, even if it’s not easy to grasp.

Heavy, imposing and undoubtedly well done. Recommended for sleepyheads and those attending the Academy.