Khruangbin are no slouches when it comes to the remix. They’ve been reworked before, in 2016, with the highly collectible EP on Boogiefuturo. But this time, they’re taking it a step further with an album dedicated to the art. Entering the tight-knit world of a Khruangbin song can be a little daunting. They have created this entire universe in which the trio seem to function telepathically in the way the music is composed, arranged and played. To mess with their delicate eco-system can invoke feelings similar to that of an unwanted guest crashing a good-time party. “We write our music to be interpreted; this is another wonderful interpretation of the music,” reassure Khruangbin. “There is something very vulnerable about letting others work on your music. But through the correspondence with the different artists, we gained a bigger connection to the songs themselves.”
Khruangbin has always been multilingual, weaving far-flung musical languages like East Asian surf-rock, Persian funk, and Jamaican dub into mellifluous harmony. But on its third album, it’s finally speaking out loud. Mordechai features vocals prominently on nearly every song, a first for the mostly instrumental band. It’s a shift that rewards the risk, reorienting Khruangbin’s transportive sound toward a new sense of emotional directness, without losing the spirit of nomadic wandering that’s always defined it. And it all started with them coming home.
Late Night Tales: Khruangbin is a DJ mix album curated by American psychedelia band Khruangbin for Late Night Tales series, set to be released by Night Time Stories on 4 December 2020. It will include Khruangbin's cover of Kool & the Gang's instrumental tune "Summer Madness". The compilation includes a mixture of various global artists outside of the mainstream music, including South Korean rock band Sanulrim, Belarus band Pesniary, Nigerian musician Maxwell Udoh, and Ethiopian band Roha Band, among others.