Dirty Beaches (2005–2014)
Dirty Beaches began as a one-man band, sometimes employing sampling, inspired by Zhang's longtime love of hip-hop. In addition to his own years moving between countries and on the road touring, films are one of Zhang's influences, particularly those by both Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai and Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Zhang commented on Wong's films in an interview with Nothing Bad Magazine, saying:
"[They're] usually about the passage of time, and how in relation it distorts your relationship with everything else in life. The central Dirty Beaches character is a product of those experiences. Of someone traveling long distances in search of something, in exile, misplaced, with no home to return to".
As Dirty Beaches, Zhang released work on record labels worldwide after his first album, Old Blood, released on Montreal-based Fixture Records in 2008. He recorded and toured with musicians such as Dum Dum Girls, U.S. Girls, Tonya Harding, Ela Orleans, and Xiu Xiu.
In 2011, Zhang left a kitchen job to play music full-time. First touring solo, he then put together a live band with saxophone player Francesco De Gallo and drummer Jesse Locke. On tour, the band moved away from the sample-based rock of Badlands to embrace a more improvised sound. In 2012, guitarist Shub Roy and electronic musician Bernardino Femminielli joined the band live and in the studio.
After Badlands released in 2011, followed by several EPs and collaborations, the band recorded 75 minutes of new material in late 2012 and early 2013. One set of songs, Drifters, began at La Brique recording space in Montreal and features Zhang's vocals and songwriting, along with instrumental contributions by Roy, Femminielli, De Gallo, and Locke. Using live instruments such as the guitar, bass, keyboard, drum machines and saxophones arranged into original loops. None of the eight songs sampled previously existent recordings, a change from previous methods. While he was recording Drifters, Zhang moved to Berlin. On the invitation his friend Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, he finished the record in Newcombe's studio and also recorded Love is the Devil, an instrumental set of eight songs, in late hours when the studio was not in use.
Drifters/Love Is The Devil eventually released as a double LP, as well as on a single CD and in digital formats, on the Zoo Music label in May 2013. In November of the same year, Dirty Beaches played the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Camber Sands, United Kingdom.
In August 2014, Zhang announced a new album, Stateless, which later released in November 2014. In December 2014, filmmaker Loic Zimmermann released an extended music video for the track Time Washes Everything Away, focusing on Zhang recording in Lisbon.
In a series of tweets in October 2014, Zhang announced the retirement of Dirty Beaches.
Music as Last Lizard and under full name (2015–present)
In early 2015, Zhang began releasing music under the project name Last Lizard. He also started releasing music under his full name.
In July 2018, Zhang released the album Divine Weight. The recording process originated from Zhang's dissatisfaction with his saxophone recordings prompting him to feed them through a laptop, "manipulating the sounds into entirely new forms, like rusted copper piping stripped out of an abandoned building and melted down into shiny, interwoven wiring". The recordings were influenced by Chilean-French mystic and filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, and the cover shows a distorted image of the Japanese Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno. In a 2018 review of Divine Weight, Pitchfork commented:
"Since retiring the Dirty Beaches moniker in 2014, having completed the transition from songs to soundscaping, Zhang has fully indulged his newfound aesthetic freedom. Whether he's releasing meditative piano instrumentals, forming violent free jazz trios, or constructing dark, dissonant sound collages with Love Theme, Zhang is never afraid to expose his work's jagged edges. He's long favoured a raw field recording ambience that amplifies the overarching sense of improvised experiments being caught on tape in real time".
In 2020, Zhang collaborated on two full length instrumental albums, LONGONE with Tseng Kuo-Hung and STYX with Pavel Milyakov.
In 2021, Zhang collaborated with Pierre Guerineau for the soundtrack to the Christopher Makoto Yogi film I Was a Simple Man. The following year in 2022, he composed the soundtrack for Godland, directed by Hlynur Pálmason.
Zhang's music explores the meaning of existence, often expressing subtle feelings about being in different countries, by integrating his own cultural and traditional heritage into his work. In a 2023 interview with BmoreArt, Zhang commented:
"I belong nowhere, neither a native Taiwanese nor a true American, I will be an outsider all my life. So I don't have that kind of loyalty to a place... I used to feel sad because of the feeling of being an outsider. At that time, I didn't know why I was sad, and I didn't know what "diaspora" meant. It was an abstract, indescribable, and unspeakable feeling".
In January 2024, Zhang released a full length album, Young Gods Run Free.
In April 2026, Zhang released a full length album, Dras. In June of the same year, he released a double album, Orion/Mother, of which two tracks featured in a short film, At the River Styx, directed by Brian Echon and filmed at the Los Angeles River.
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