The prolific Alex Zhang Hungtai returns with a double LP, Orion / Mother, his second release of 2026 and a high point in a discography spanning over twenty years. Whereas Hungtai’s first release of the year, Dras, feels lonely—it documents solo saxophone recordings made largely in Montreal’s imposing St. Joseph’s Oratory—Orion / Mother embraces a spirit of collectivity. Here, Hungtai cuts together home recordings of improvisatory sounds made with Melissa Almaguer (tap dance), Leo Chang (gong), Che Chen (percussion), Laura Cox (flute), Madison Greenstone (clarinet), Lester St. Louis (cello), and Kwami Winifeld (noise). These collaged recordings become a foundation for searching compositions that feature Hungtai’s trumpet in a sort of exhausted concerto. Playing above tracks that incorporate unsettled percussion, industrial noise, and drone, Hungtai’s horn becomes a clarion motif that sews the machinic rhythms of the first discwith the slower, more desolate scape of the second. To my ears, the expansive length of Orion / Mother situates it in relation to Hungtai’s last double LP, Drifters / Love is the Devil (the penultimate record he released under the alias Dirty Beaches in 2013). That record marked a shift across its two discs—from noirish no wave songcraft to a more pensive instrumental mode. Orion / Mother may augur another moment of transition in Hungtai’s practice. Beyond his play with genre, this remarkable LP introduces a new method of play that incorporates both the singular voice of its creator and the instrumental ground of its collaborators.
Brennan McCracken is a writer from K’jipuktuk (Halifax) living in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). He is currently completing PhD studies at the Department of English at Concordia University.