KHRUANGBIN Vinyl & CDs

Review: Desert funkers Khruangbin announce their latest album A La Sala, turning their efforts inward to a more personal recollection of childhood and origination, and to reach a firmer understanding of what exact influences made this troupe who they are today. In contrast to their last record Mordechai (2020), uniquely conceived as a party record from the jump of its making, A La Sala (translation: 'to the room') is the measured, self-reflective morning after; lead singles 'May Ninth' and 'A Love International' pare back the layers even further than we could imagine Khruangbin pulling otherwise, making for emotional ponderings of the external world, inextricably tied to the internal as it is.

Review: Khruangbin has very much become the masters of the downtempo sphere over the last decade. The Texan Thai-funk trio makes spaced-out, star-gazing and gently psychedelic sounds with deep and dubby rhythms, barely-there but alluring vocal hooks and persuasive basslines. Mordechai was their third studio album back in June of 2020 and is an ode to everything that'd done to date. Building on their Thai and Iranian rock roots, they head into new ground with a subtle lyrical freshness and more widescreen world of intercontinental influences all perfectly fused into their own sublime sounds.

Review: In 2015, Texas & London-based trio Khruangbin's debut album 'The Universe Smiles Upon You' garnered wide critical acclaim and captured attention for its seamless genre-blending and internationally shaped sound - one that evidently has deep roots in Thai-funk cassette culture. Similarly to their debut, sophomore record 'Con Todo El Mundo' is a cocktail of largely instrumental surf-rock, afro-funk, middle-eastern and far-eastern influences, mixed with warmth and soul. As if their pallette wasn't diverse enough, the additions of the pared back boogie on 'Evan Finds The Third Room', the widescreen dream-pop of 'A Hymn' and deeply intricate writing of closer 'Friday Morning', are illustrative of a band who have worked hard to broaden their horizons while keeping their roots in mind and, despite transatlantic bases, clearly remain a stunningly cohesive and well-matched outfit.

Review: RECOMMENDED
The remix album is probably pretty hard to crack in terms of putting it together. On the one hand, you want a broad selection of producers to take the work and make it new again. But there's also a very real risk of winding up with a bunch of random tracks with no real coherent thread to ensure the LP is actually going to get enough people buying to warrant engineering, mastering, and pressing costs.

Khruangbin have certainly cracked it with these takes on tracks from their most recent and perhaps most lush long form outing to date. We have sophisticated micro house, percussive slo-mo disco, slick-to-the-touch downbeat grooves and surrealist pop, all of which work both individually and together, the result being a record that not only knows its own mind, it can easily convince others, too.

Review: 'Mordechai is another blissed-out record from Texan party-chill-psyche trio Khruangbin. It's also among the outfit's most defined and driven, a smooth, sticky hot funk odyssey made for hazy afternoon soirees. Leader Laura Lee is, as ever, unfathomably siren-like on vocals, her bass grooves aiding the process of seduction no end. Even at the most upbeat and anthemic, 'Time (You and I)', it's hard not to feel woozy and intoxicated by the pared-back breaks and guitar lick combination. Dance floor ammo for sure, as is Pelota. Overall, though, it's an album best savoured slowly, allowing you to fully appreciate every lackadaisical moment of opiate goodness, with tracks such as 'Father Bird, Mother Bird', 'One To Remember' and 'Shida' summoning stunning sticky, heavy, deep atmospheres.

Review: 'Mordechai is another blissed-out record from Texan party-chill-psyche trio Khruangbin. It's also among the outfit's most defined and driven, a smooth, sticky hot funk odyssey made for hazy afternoon soirees. Leader Laura Lee is, as ever, unfathomably siren-like on vocals, her bass grooves aiding the process of seduction no end. Even at the most upbeat and anthemic, 'Time (You and I)', it's hard not to feel woozy and intoxicated by the pared-back breaks and guitar lick combination. Dance floor ammo for sure, as is Pelota. Overall, though, it's an album best savoured slowly, allowing you to fully appreciate every lackadaisical moment of opiate goodness, with tracks such as 'Father Bird, Mother Bird', 'One To Remember' and 'Shida' summoning stunning sticky, heavy, deep atmospheres.

Review: Inspired by the slightly unlikely collision of the Thai music of the '70s and The Shadows, Khruangbin - the name means 'aeroplane' in Thailand - are purveyors of a deliriously mellow and beguiling form of jammed-out power-trio guitar music - far removed from standard notions of psych and dreampop, partly owing to its pan-global influences, its nonetheless both psychedelic and dreamy, not to mention possessed of an unhurried, reflective and spacious lilt that renders this Texan-London outfit a rare treat in an information-saturated age, taking on delicate soul and funk with exotic atmospheres and making the journey feel both blissful and effortless.

Review: Inspired by the slightly unlikely collision of the Thai music of the '70s and The Shadows, Khruangbin - the name means 'aeroplane' in Thailand - are purveyors of a deliriously mellow and beguiling form of jammed-out power-trio guitar music - far removed from standard notions of psych and dreampop, partly owing to its pan-global influences, its nonetheless both psychedelic and dreamy, not to mention possessed of an unhurried, reflective and spacious lilt that renders this Texan-London outfit a rare treat in an information-saturated age, taking on delicate soul and funk with exotic atmospheres and making the journey feel both blissful and effortless.

Review: Sometimes it's just too difficult to contain our excitement; we're quaking in our boots at news of Khruangbin's next release, with the Texan three-piece this time lending their alt-indie-funk mastery to vocal frontage by Leon Bridges. The humorously titled lead single 'B-side' is emblematic of their stated aim here - to redefine "how people perceive Texas music i that beautiful marriage of country and r'n'b i and really paying homage to that." The sonic result? Bubbling bass and wahhy riffs, over a ghostly and misty relaxers' beat. Its hook digs into our thighs deeper than a Sheriff's steel spurs, and fittingly, it's music video is themed after a 19th Century western town.

Review: If you've caught either Khruangbin or Leon Bridges live before, or indeed listened to anything by either band or producer-singer-songwriter, you'll know where this 20-minute EP is heading. The sleeve art, which gives more than a nod to the 1960s hippy movement, also offers a major clue.

Tripped out, smoked out, lackadaisical, bliss-infused overtures, honied and syrupy, easing you in so far that you don't quite realise how hard it is to crawl back out of the sugar-coated opiate haze. A collection of heady, hallucinogenic work for 21st Century high plains drifters, it's jazzy, psychy, lush soulful fare you'll be wanting to hear again and again, capturing the heat and slow pace of America's southern states with heartfelt songwriting from genuine masters. The result is something very special indeed.

Review: Firm festival favourites Khruangbin are a Texan trio that make star-gazing Thai funk, psyched-out soul and seductive fusion sounds. They are currently releasing a number of live albums with one of them being 'Live at Stubbs' featuring them playing as well as performances by Kelly Doyle, Ruben Moreno, The Suffers and Robert Ellis. This record really captures the band's unique energy, the warmth of their bass and the majesty of their melodies so makes for a bewitching and entrancing listen with a limited-edition and unique album cover.

Review: Khruangbin might be the most logical and fitting choice for a Late Night Tales compilation in recent memory. The Texan psychedelic chill artists have always had a sense of the exploratory and unknown running through their blissful grooves, and the fundamental idea behind this series was always about opening up doors to new musical discoveries for listeners.

In many ways, the Houston trio have gone above and beyond. Melding a breadth of sounds that have emerged from an equally diverse set of cultures, we visit Hindi-disco, South Korean rock, African bass, Belarusian folk. Capped off with an exclusive version of Kool & The Gang's 'Summer Madness' conceived by the compilers themselves, it's a case of 15 gateway tracks all of which belong to artists and genres that are crying out for you to dive in.

Review: Texan funk-dub stalwarts Khruangbin set aside their own inward-looking solo projects for another collaborative endeavour. Following their first collab with Leon Bridges, they've now covered the work of 'African rock royalty' Ali Farka Toure, alongside his son, Vieux. Toure is a much-celebrated Malian musician whose 'desert blues' evoked a similarly African, primordial version of Khruangbin's Western cosmic folk. While their music came up in completely different times, the throughlines between the Khru' and Toure's musics are far from tenuous; together, the band and Vieux Toure paint a diasporic picture of a legend's music and life, musically documenting the influence his music has had on subsequent generations.