Hotel EP by Dirty Beaches

HOTEL EP

Brief Info on HOTEL:

During the past 4 European tours (between 2011-2012) there would be occasionally a piano in the lobby or somewhere close to the dining area in the hotels we've stayed. Sometimes at night around 3 or 4am when I can't sleep, I would sneak downstairs and play the piano and record bits and pieces of ideas onto my cellphone. Of course, there were many times I was caught and was asked to leave and stop disturbing the other guests that were sleeping, and it was quite embarassing...

But that was the birth of the idea of HOTEL. Later on during the writing and recording of Drifters in Montreal, I taught myself note by note how to translate these ideas into actual piano pieces. I don't know how to play the piano, as you can probably tell from this recording, haha. But there are a lot of emotions and ideas that I find very expressive and intimate in this instrument. It gave me a voice to communicate these very intimate thoughts that I tried to relay back to the one person that meant the world to me.

In hindsight, perhaps this is some sort of prelude to the story that later became Drifters/Love Is The Devil. Hotels are very powerful symbols I find as it could be some sort of purgatory, a stopping point between A and B, but never yet as defining as the destination. Just a pit stop between before and after. Of heartbreaks, romance, and isolation, it could be everything and anything in your mind. A place where the morning light sets upon that person's face that you adore laying next to you, or an empty room full of dark shadows on a wall full of blood and shit. Or perhaps, just a waiting room of some sort before you escape this limbo, a place where time doesn't exist.

I wish you all in good health, and in good spirits.

God speed,

Alex Zhang Hungtai

March 25th, 2013. Berlin.

(Originally released on "Drifters/Love Is The Devil" JAPAN EDITON Via Big Love Records, as a BONUS DISC)

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