Alex Zhang Hungtai (Dirty Beaches)

Rockabilly? Blues? Hip Hop? Soul? R’n’B? Country? It makes no difference to Alex Zhang Hungtai. There’s not a genre of popular music that he hasn’t wrenched apart and put together again, deformed beyond recognition and added to his private musicology. Since 2005, the trans-Pacific nomad from Montreal has worked under the name Dirty Beaches. He’s recorded soundtracks and monotonous “drone music” records that consist of single humming noises. But above all, he is a magnificent, perfectly eclectic historiographer of polymorphous perversity: he sweeps through music from the past as if through a landscape of ruins, to which ghosts of the future sway and murmur. During Foreign Affairs, he will be presenting a special programme developed in Berlin, supported by Shubayan Roy, Femminielli and Noir.

As recent immigrants in Berlin, they wish to present something all migrants can relate to. From the initial arrival through feelings of displacement and assimilation to new environments, they wish to adapt and transcend the sources of conflict to find balance.

The artists have been invited to curate a three-day programme – a great opportunity for them to present the various projects they are involved in as well as experiment with different improvised line-ups.

The first evening will consist of duo pairings that elaborate on exchanges of thought, counter balance, and absorption.

The second will be based on their journeys, four solo performances representing personal perceptions of isolation, fear, fantasy, and optimism.

The final night will be a quartet collusion exploring the all of the latter themes.

They have invited guest friends all of which they have met in Berlin, to perform, DJ and experiment with hybrid musical taste and genres. A melting pot of various sound palettes that inspire them.

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