Photo via: Cody Hicks

Released in 2011, Badlandscatapulted Alex Zhang Hungtai's moody home recordings as Dirty Beaches onto world tours and festival stages. The record wasan organizational and stylistic leap; loops of earth-rending guitar noise t-boning pop samples with the vinyl scratches left on, and asui generisatmosphere that always seemed to defer to something truerather than the character Hungtai had created.

This reality, elicited by the charged music, could have beenboth acomplex set of feelings or a set of images (hence all those cinematic comparisons). Everyone loves a sequel, and 2013's double albumDrifters/Love Is The Devildidn't shortchange anyone who appreciated Zhang Hungtaifor his Tarantino levels (had to do it one time) of accoutrement, or the smouldering passionfrom which everything flowed.

Today, Alex Zhang Hungtaiannouncedthathis new album, Stateless, will be his last as Dirty Beaches. But if you'relamenting the loss of a project that still seemed to have so much potential, Dirty Beaches didn't just arrive fully formed at Badlands.Before all that, hedevelopedhis lo-fi experiments in Montreal at a prolific rate. His back catalogue contains both sketches of hissound to come and tangents that stand alone as great compositions in their own regard.

Hisdiscography is well worth probing further, so we've collected some great lesser-known Dirty Beaches Bandcamp gems below.

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5 Hidden Gems from Dirty Beaches Deep Back Catalogue