How would describe this ride you’ve been on this past year?

Being able to go from place to place all the time. I used to tour, but there are different ways to tour. My buddy just got off tour and was talking about how he was the old guy in the band, so everybody in the band is drinking every night and being called rock stars or whatever. It was fast food every day, that sounds terrible. It would literally make me unhealthy and miserable. When I was a kid on the road and doing that stuff, why not? But I am not a kid and not nearly as young as I was before. So it is good to go on tour with people that share your interest so we can go enjoy a city. We can actually take the time and enjoy it instead of just being hung over from the night before. Some stuff does happen, I am certainly guilty of that. But you gotta enjoy it in different ways.

Any places that made you say to yourself, “I really just got to do that?”

We played this sunrise set in Croatia, so I think we are going to be redoing something like that again next year. At like 6 a.m. on the beach in Croatia along the Adriatic Sea and everybody had been partying all night to these DJs. So when they reach us we’re playing Khruangbin stuff, very comedown stuff as the sun is coming up over the horizon. Probably one of the more cooler things I’ve ever done. We had a day off in New Orleans last month and just had a day to walk around New Orleans and enjoy that. We played like the last night of Jazz Fest. It was great and I had never been before. Next time I’d like to see a couple acts because by the time we got there we had been on the road with Tycho and we’re just doing a one-off show in New Orleans. We were beat when we got in there (laughs). We were tired and full of this amazing meal and we’re on the stage kind of tired. But the audience was so amazing it got us moving and that was really, really great.

Glastonbury was truly an experience (laughs). I didn’t know what to expect but it was a muddy, muddy hang. Don’t go trying to expect to be clean, just embrace being dirty. It’s tough, because we get on stage and like to wear nice clothes and looking clean. Unless you’re Earth, Wind and Fire you can’t do it. They got off the stage in white linens head to do. You guys did not go through the mud, you guys levitated to get on stage.

You’ve been touring hard for the last year and you’ve been playing longer than that together. Have you noticed any ways in which the band has evolved in the last year?

Songs change. When we recorded A Universe Smiles Upon You we were playing most of those songs for the first time, we didn’t really rehearse. We just kind of wrote them, played them a couple times, picked the best take and mixed those. When we play it every night the song dictates how it feels. There is new dynamics and energy that come just from playing it all the time. Since we are on the road we are all listening to music and we are all people that like to dig for fun stuff, especially digging for stuff that is unexpected. Here is this music from Beijing or Taiwan or from Guadalupe. I am actually still on that Guadalupe trip. The connectivity is so easy online and when you find a band you like you get that record and look for similar stuff and start playing that game. Next thing you know you have a larger record collection than you did before. I want to incorporate it all into what we do in some way.

Have you found yourself playing with stuff now that wasn’t there initially? Thai funk was certainly an aesthetic you played and tapped into, but is there stuff now from other places, like Guadalupe?

A lot of melodic stuff in the most recent record we caught has influences from the Mediterranean, like Morocco, North Africa. Then further east into Turkey and Iran and then into a little Spanish stuff. That whole area kind of feeds off itself. I could play something that sounds like it is Spanish, but it is really just a Spanish version of Moorish music. Or when you go way back to traditional Irish singers, not the Celtic singers of the 60’s but really old. There’s this melodic thing that you don’t really hear anywhere else unless there’s been contact with the Arab world. Then you research and find out these people on the coasts were all trading with each and other and different musical ideas were being shared and you see a lot of commonality. That’s kind of what we like to do, find the common stuff.

What’s going on with the new stuff you are putting to record?

We just started mixing, so it is in the bag at this point. More musical elements on here while trying to keep the Khruangbin formula. It’s a much bigger record than the last one. There’s more instruments. I think it will come out in the beginning of next year.

What’s exciting for you over this next year with Khruangbin?

We’re about to do our festival season and then we’re going to be going on a tour with Chicano Batman in the fall. We’re going to be on the road for the rest of the year basically. Festival season is weird because it is a lot of one-offs and you just fly in and be there on the weekend. And we’ll be settling into this new home of ours in L.A.

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