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“Mordechai” by Khruangbin: The end of an insider tip – culture

There are these bands you don’t want to write about at all. It could easily be argued that music is a conceptless language and that the aesthetic mediation can only be poorly achieved through words. You could also just call Khruangbin a brightly spotted trout that slips through your hands over and over again.

A music group where the imposition to label them begins with the constant fear of spelling the name wrong. Khruangbin is the Thai favorite word of bassist Laura Lee, which literally means “aircraft”. Had they known that the band would have such a success, the choice would probably have been another name that is less difficult to pronounce, she said recently. Too late.

In any case, it only gets really hairy when describing what the Texan band has pressed onto records. Since its beginnings, the trio Soul, Surf, Dub, Funk and Psychedelic have woven into an obscure mixture in which Iranian, Thai and South American influences overlap organically. Stilmix is ​​actually a word that has long since become a dirty word in the streaming age due to unspeakable mashups and algorithmically mixed playlists.

The guitar as a storyteller

But Khruangbin manage to produce an oscillating sound that, in its dialectical confusion, is at the same time sophisticated and minimalistic, completely relaxed and incredibly groovy. So far, their success can be seen in the number of clicks on Spotify and YouTube, rather than on cheers in the music press. With their fourth album “Mordechai”, the band should now definitely lose the status of “insider tip”.

The trio tells us that their idea is simple. Not wanting too much, but distilling the maximum out of the reduction. The basic ingredients on “Mordechai” are no more than the age-old recipe for success of rock ‘n’ roll: drums, guitar, bass. If you master the basics, you don’t have to show off crazy sounds. What Mark Speer gnaws out of his strings could usually be described as showy mucking. But with Khruangbin, he swings up with his game to become a true storyteller.

The sound spans a network of associations that communicate more than any lyric sheet could possibly hold. Speer’s melodies and short solos are still very present on “Mordechai”, even if a multilingual vocals dominate the album for the first time. The song “Pelota” is performed completely in Spanish and effortlessly bounces with its South American rhythm over every fortification on the Texas-Mexico border.


Tight drums, casual bass

The tightness is due to the precise pulse of the drums and the casual bass playing. Lee should consolidate her place among the great female bass players in music history alongside Kim Deal, Tina Weymouth, Kim Gordon and Melissa Auf der Maur. The song “Time (You and I)”, which is unusually danceable by Khruangbin standards, is a hot application for the throne.

It was Houston, Texas where Laura Lee, Mark Speer, and Donald Ray “DJ” Johnson Jr. met in the ‘0s. A bass player with Latin American roots, a white guitarist and a black drummer. A fact that should not be emphasized further – unfortunately, diversity would still not be an exception in the pop world. And then of all places the Space City is their home base, which has so far attracted attention through ZZ Top and Destiny’s Child.

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The beginnings of Khruangbin can also be described as down-to-earth. Johnson and Speer met in 2004 in Rudy Rasmus’s gospel band at St. John’s Methodist Church, where they worked as instrumentalists. Acquaintances finally came into contact with Lee, with whom Speer shared a passion for Afghan music and the architecture of the Middle East. Just six months after Lee started playing the bass, they both went on tour to support Bonobo.

Self-forgetfulness and cosmopolitanism

The title of the new album is said to be dedicated to a man from London who took Laura Lee to go hiking and, by jumping into a pool of water, encouraged her to experience a kind of revival that gave her creativity new momentum. At the same time, a bird of prey adorns the cover – perhaps a reference to the falcon Mordechai from the terrific Wes Anderson film “The Royal Tenenbaums”? Mordechai is also a biblical figure in the book of Ester. A Jew who lived in the Persian Diaspora.

Good cue: This time you didn’t want to record an album that sounded like a certain place, Lee said recently to the “New York Times”. Khruangbin has done this in an impressive way. Certainly the overwhelming reference thunderstorm could be interpreted as a tie in places. Long-windedness sometimes sneaks into self-forgetfulness and cosmopolitanism.

And yet “Mordechai” is more than an easy listening record with an eclectic touch. Shortly before the end of the album there is “So We Won’t Forget”. A peeping ode to memory. A lovely guitar underlines the lyrically performed attempt to snatch the transient life from oblivion. A song of bewitching beauty. Released with a music video that pulls the viewer’s feet away. Houston, we have a problem. Handkerchief please.

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