Dirty Beaches – Lone Runner 7″

DIRTY BEACHES (or Alex Zhang Hungtai) just released his first 7″ from the Suicide Squeeze label in Seattle, adding some live material to an extensive discography that only continues to grow.

The 7″ includes two songs, one of which is an outtake from a live session at the KXLU Part Time Punks radio show in Los Angeles, California. The other track is “Stye Eye”, which could originally be found on the Generic Shit split cassette tape from 2010.

Despite all the past attention, I’m having some trouble adjusting to the sound that’s being produced here. Both of these frightening songs fall short of hitting any sort of mark, making it difficult to feel like this release is actually giving us any worthwhile material. Both tracks are literally drenched by a pool of murky and pestering swirling ambiance, while Hungtai unpredictably howls, yelps and shrieks in between fizzy hand claps and bubbling bass lines dwelling deep in the depths. There’s also an increasingly heavy primitive element buried in these womb-like freak outs, but it’s nothing that will keep your focus intact for too long before you’re looking for something with more of a punch. The occasional cymbal crashing looks to add that punch in “Stye Eye”, but it ends up just coming off as stale and predictable by the time it’s all said and done. Listen to both of these tracks below and grab a 7″ while ya still can.

Lone Runner (Live) –

Stye Eye –

My Rating: 5/10
Genre/ Tags: Lo-Fi, Experimental, Ambient
Lone Runner 7″: Tracklist:
1.) Lone Runner (Live)
2.) Stye Eye

BUY the 7″ directly from Insound – limited to 750 !
Dirty Beaches on Bandcamp

Past Related Posts:
Dirty Beaches/ U.S. Girls – Split 7″ (Sibling Sex)