Dirty Beaches began as a one-man band, sometimes employing sampling, inspired by Zhang's longtime love of hip hop.

"[3] Zhang has lived in Taipei, Queens, Etobicoke, Honolulu, San Francisco, Shanghai, Vancouver, Montreal, Berlin, Lisbon and Los Angeles,[4] among other cities.

First touring solo, he then put together a live band with sax player Francesco De Gallo and drummer Jesse Locke.

In 2012, guitarist Shub Roy and electronic musician Bernardino Femminielli joined Dirty Beaches live and in the studio, and they remain members of the band as of 2013.

One set of songs, Drifters, was begun at La Brique recording space in Montreal and features Zhang's vocals and songwriting, along with instrumental contributions by Roy and Femminielli and former bandmates De Gallo and Locke.

In November, Dirty Beaches played the All Tomorrow's Parties festival held at the seaside resort of Camber Sands, United Kingdom.

According to Pitchfork, "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 favored a raw field-recording ambience that amplifies the overarching sense of improvised experiments being caught on tape in real time.

My Saint", directed by Ana Lily Amirpour and featuring music from Karen O and Michael Kiwanuka promoting the fashion label Kenzo's spring line.

"[8] The recordings were influenced by Chilean-French mystic and filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, and the cover shows a distorted image of the recently deceased Japanese Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno.