Khruangbin
Mordechai

Good morning and welcome aboard our Fantastic Airbus, destination Houston.

The duration of the flight is not specified; it depends on your listening ability.

Smoking on board is allowed, and so is any kind of substance. We kindly ask you to turn off your mobile phones and, if possible, your mind as well.

We fly gently on velvet, solfeggiato by a warm and unfulfilled summer harmony above the promontories of Texas.

From the portholes, the view is distracted, scrolling like slides of soundscapes light-years away from digital swarms and neon frenzies.

Distant from experimentalism and virtuosity, the sound audible from the windows is crafted with an artisanal alchemy. The delicacy, if tempered by the soul, possesses a disruptive and silent strength like the one vigorously whispered by the imagination of a powerful shaman.

But here during this flight, we are no longer in the field of reveries, moved by the crystals of our mind, but within Revelations, frescoed by those images entirely out of the control of the Ego and third transmissions, by those visions that are parsimoniously given to us in exclusive privacy by Shiva.

The timeless sound of Khruangbin, in Thai "flying machine", seems to truly begin the dance with the beat of that sacred drum; a metaphor of a Flying Horse, with its coat painted with magical and cosmological symbols like the splendid album cover depicting an eagle, open in a night flight, lying down and looking upon a green forest brilliant with the reflections of a dadaist moon, in the background stars invite the gaze of the earthly in the search for a path, a trace…

It could be called a cult band, but it becomes difficult to describe the style of this Gestalt Band, considering that the influences seem so intertwined that no genetic code can be deciphered, between soul references, psychedelic veins, dub vibrations, rhythms from the World (West Africa, the Far East, and also Latin soul).

Since ancient times, for three instrumentalists to carry all the music of the world on their shoulders might seem a crazy and titanic enterprise, if it weren't that for a citizen of the world, this responsibility would probably not be a burden but a conciliatory liberation.

“Pelota“ is the next stop on our journey, in search of a psychedelia that contemplates a sophisticated world music, the band's exotic turn, halfway between flamenco and rumba, Latin rock hallucinated by cumbia and chupito, which in the voice of the captivating Laura Lee finds a sinuous and elegant groove in the sound cathedral characteristic of the previous 2 albums.

But that initial mantra, that “bodyless dive“ that accompanied the Airbus takeoff, is especially present in “First Class“, an oneiric piece accompanied by metallic vibraphone discharges, which reassures all passengers of not flying economy.

Having turned off all tablets & smartphones, reset all loopers and samples, piled up the bales of hay, the music slowly snakes and takes off disconnected from the various tam-tams; in search of sidereal voids to cross, of soap bubbles in the stratosphere to color (the band usually records at Mark Speer's Farm… what a lovely Life).

In “So We Don't Forget“, Laura Lee's vocal timbre accompanies a dreamy guitar arpeggio, in a nostalgic call the guitar of Mark Speer reminds one of John Marr from the Smiths, while the bass veers towards a delicate and subtle funk, in the search for madeleines scattered in our jovial existence.

Mordechai is a fresh and spontaneous work to savor languidly and melancholically, sipping a Spritz Saint Germain, during a summer sunset on a semi-deserted beach of our beloved peninsula.

The ensemble at the end is something much richer than the parts at play, even though it must be said that the bass line and the groove emanated by Laura Lee, D. Johnson's powerful and geometric drumming, and Speer's arpeggios are chiseled in pristine perfection.

There are probably many ways to yield to the song form, after the first two predominantly instrumental albums Khruangbin has chosen the lesser-trodden path.

And also because of this, they are so delightfully different.