6 products
A LA SALA - Soleil (Colored Vinyl)
Regular price $26.00 Save $-26.00Khruangbin's fourth studio album, A La Sala ("To the Room" in Spanish), is an exercise in returning in order to go further, and doing so on your own terms. It continues the mystery and sanctity that is the key to how bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, drummer Donald "DJ" Johnson, Jr. And guitarist Mark "Marko" Speer approach music. If 2020's Mordechai, the last studio LP Khruangbin made without collaborators, was a party record that enhanced the band's musical reputation far and wide, then A La Sala is the measured morning after. It's a gorgeously airy record completed only in the company of the group's longtime engineer Steve Christensen, with minimal overdubs. It's a window onto the bounties powering Khruangbin's vision, a reimagining and refueling for the long haul ahead. A La Sala scales Khruangbin down to scale up, a creative strategy with the future in mind.
The trio's collective musical DNA, the years spent constructing it in Houston's local-meets-global cultural stew, ensures the band continues to sound like no one but itself. A cascade of crisp melodies emanates from Marko's reverb-heavy electric, dancing gently around Laura Lee's minimalist almost-dub bass triangles, while DJ's drums serve as the tightened-up pocket and unwavering dance-floor on which all this movement takes place. Yet there's a freshness to A La Sala's instrumental interactivity, less concerned with getting further out than going deeper in, a profound desire to celebrate the world's external wonders. Where prior albums strived towards music's polyglot edges, such inquiries now sound like beloved intimacies. Here, Khruangbin's sonic touch-points - whether spaghetti-western film scores (on "Fifteen Fifty-Three"), West African discos (on "Pon Pón"), G-funk fantasias ("Todavía Viva"), living room dancing moments (the first single, "A Love International"), or even ambient found-sounds (on "Farolim de Felgueiras and throughout the album") - are ingrained characteristics. This is who they are! Unique and huge (and growing), ambitious and driven. Khruangbin's aspirations and commitment to playful creativity even extends to A La Sala's vinyl packages, of which there will be seven distinctive covers and color-sets. Designed by the band using Marko's multitude of travelog photos, the images are windows from the band's living room onto a set of daydreams, scenes of impossible skies, external glances that illuminate what is going on inside. Each cover image comes with a matching color vinyl. These too are all about looking out and looking back, in order to better look ahead.
- 1 Fifteen Fifty-Three
- 2 May Ninth
- 3 Ada Jean
- 4 Farolim de Felgueiras
- 5 Pon PÓN
- 6 Todavía Viva
- 7 Juegos y Nubes
- 8 Hold Me Up (Thank You)
- 9 Caja de la Sala
- 10 Three from Two
- 11 A Love International
- 12 Les Petits Gris
Con Todo El Mundo
Regular price $25.00 Save $-25.00Formed of Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar, and Donald "DJ" Johnson on drums; globetrotting Texan trio Khruangbin present their second album Con Todo El Mundo. Whereas their 2015 debut The Universe Smiles Upon You was influenced by '60s and '70s Thai cassettes and compilations of southeast Asian pop, rock and funk, Con Todo El Mundo hops east over India to take inspiration in similarly under discovered funk and soul sounds of the Middle-East, particularly from Iran. Laura Lee explains the album's title: "My grandpa would always ask me ‘Como me quieres?' (‘how much do you love me'?), and he'd only ever accept one response. ‘Con todo el mundo' (With all the world)." Throughout Con Todo El Mundo, Laura Lee's melodic low-end theory, Mark's lyrical, free-role guitar lines, and DJ's ever-steady, ever-ready backbeat form something greater than their parts. A vibe-synchronous soul-unit travelling the planet, honing their craft, absorbing the sights, sounds and feels from cultures across the globe, processing them through the Khruangbin filter and gifting the result...with all the world.
- Como Me Quieres
- Lady and Man
- Maria Tambien
- 10-Aug-2017
- Como Te Quiero
- Shades of Man
- Evan Finds the Third Room
- A Hymn
- Rules
- Friday Morning
Hasta El Cielo
Regular price $26.00 Save $-26.00Globetrotting Texan trio Khruangbin release Hasta El Cielo, the band's glorious dub version of their second album Con Todo El Mundo. The full album has been processed anew along with two bonus dubs by renowned Jamaican producer Scientist. The band's exotic, spacious, psychedelic funk aligns with the dub treatment particularly well. Formed of Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar, and Donald "DJ" Johnson on drums; Khruangbin's sounds are rooted in the deepest waters of music from around the world, infused with classic soul, dub and psychedelia. Con Todo El Mundo, the band's sophomore LP, took inspiration not just from South East Asia but similarly underdiscovered funk and soul of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, particularly Iran.
LP
- With All The World
- Sisters & Brothers
- Mary Always 03:14
- Four of Five
- How I Love
- Sunny's Vision
- A La Sala
- The Red Book
- Order of Operations
- Hasta El Cielo
7"
- Rules - Scientist Dub (Bonus Track)
- Cómo Te Quiero - Scientist Dub (Bonus Track)
Mordechai
Regular price $25.00 Save $-25.00Vinyl LP pressing. 2020 release. Mordechai is a story of finding yourself in unexpected places. Travel weary and without a home after 24 itinerant months of travel and touring, Laura Lee went on a hike with a family of strangers, led by a father named Mordechai. Here, on this least expected journey after so many others, she found spiritual awakening and rebirth. Known already for drawing on the music of locales like Thailand and Iran, Khruangbin found their most diverse and global influence by looking inward, returning to their hometown and America's most diverse city: Houston, TX. With Laura Lee's voice now clear and centered amid a glossolalia of musical influence and 14 languages, Khruangbin have found singularity in multiplicity.
- 1 First Class
- 2 Time (You and I)
- 3 Connaissais de Face
- 4 Father Bird, Mother Bird
- 5 If There Is No Question
- 6 Pelota
- 7 One to Remember
- 8 Dearest Alfred
- 9 So We Won't Forget
- 10 Shida
Texas Moon
Regular price $20.00 Save $-20.00Black Vinyl. Two of the acts boldly leading Texas music into the future have now delivered a second chapter of their groundbreaking collaboration, further extending the region's sonic possibilities. Singer/songwriter Leon Bridges, from Ft. Worth, and trailblazing Houston trio Khruangbin have joined forces for the Texas Moon EP, a follow-up to 2020's acclaimed Texas Sun project. While the five new songs are clearly a continuation of the first EP, they also have an identity all their own-Bridges calls it "more introspective," while Khruangbin bassist Laura Lee says it "feels more night time." When Texas Sun was released, AllMusic called the results "intoxicating" and Paste noted that "their talents and character go together so well." Now comes the next stage-a set of songs that touch on themes like love, faith, and death while exploring new dimensions of inventive, hypnotic grooves. Significantly, both parties' musical directions were clearly affected by their time working together. Khruangbin's most recent album, Mordechai, moved their own vocals much further forward, a change they readily admit was a direct result of working with Bridges. Meanwhile, since these recordings began, in addition to his genre-defying album Gold-Digger's Sound, Bridges has put out several other challenging, shared tracks, including work with John Mayer, Lucky Daye, and Jazmine Sullivan. Texas Moon represents a genuine and rare achievement, with two of the most respected and innovative acts of their generation truly collaborating to create something new. "As far as an essentially instrumental band, these guys are kind of the top for me," says Bridges. "I'm honored to have been the first singer that they've incorporated in their music." "It feels really special to me," says Lee. "It's not Khruangbin, it's not Leon, it's this world we created together.
Tracks
- 1 Doris
- 2 B-Side
- 3 Chocolate Hills
- 4 Father Father
- 5 Mariella
Texas Sun Ep
Regular price $21.00 Save $-21.00Driving anywhere in Texas can cost you half a day, easy. For example, it'll take you over four hours just to get from R&B singer Leon Bridges' hometown of Fort Worth down to Houston, where the psychedelic wanderers in Khruangbin hail from. The state is vast, crisscrossed with rugged expanses of road flanked by limestone cliffs and granite mountains, forests of pine and mesquite, miles of desert or acres of sprawling grassland, all depending on what part you're in. And it's all baking under the Texas Sun that lends its name to Bridges and Khruangbin's new collaborative EP. "Big sky country, that's what they call Texas," Khruangbin bassist Laura Lee says. "The horizon line goes all the way from one side to another without interruption. There's something really comforting about that." On Texas Sun, these two members of the state's musical vanguard meet up somewhere in the middle of that scene, in the mythical nexus of Texas' past, present, and future – a dreamy badlands where genres blur as seamlessly as the terrain.
- Texas Sun
- Midnight
- C-Side
- Conversion