On tour, Dirty Beaches moved away from the sample-based rock n roll of "Badlands" to embrace a more improvised sound. 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. After the release of "Badlands" and a number of EPs and collaborations, Dirty Beaches recorded 75 minutes of new material in late 2012 and early 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. Making use of live instruments- guitar, bass, keyboard, drum machines and saxophones- arranged into original loops, none of the eight songs include any samples of previously existent recordings, a change from Zhang's previous working methods. During the course of recording "Drifters", Zhang's relationship of several years ended in Canada and he relocated to the studio of friend Anton Newcombe in Berlin, where he finished the record 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" was released as a double LP, as well as on a single CD and in digital formats, by the Zoo Music label in May 2013. In November, Dirty Beaches played the All Tomorrow's Parties festival held at the seaside resort of Camber Sands, United Kingdom. In August 2014, Dirty Beaches announced his 3rd album, Stateless, which would be entirely instrumental and released in November 2014. In a series of tweets in October 2014, Dirty Beaches announced their breakup. In early 2015, Zhang began releasing music under the project name of "Last Lizard". He also started releasing music under his own name. 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." On June 4, 2017, Zhang appeared in the fifth, David Lynch-directed episode of the revived third season of "Twin Peaks".