Houston trio Khruangbin released one of the more beautiful earworm albums of recent memory when it dropped The Universe Smiles Upon You at the tail end of 2015. It’s a lush album whose Thai-inspired funk, crystalline tones and dream-like production create a calm psychedelia perfect for gazing at the cosmos and contemplating your place among them. Samual Muir’s vibrant, astronomical artwork for the record echoes the musical headiness of it all.
Turns out the band is a lot more grounded than that. Drummer D.J. and guitarist Mark Speer had been playing together for 10 years in a church band before they bonded with bassist Laura Lee going down the rabbit hole of Thai funk on the internet. What initially started as nonchalant hangs over music together turned into nonchalant concerts together. 2016 was a coming out year for this band and it’s going to be hard to bottle them back up. When we chatted with Speer, he was in Long Beach watching B-rated horror films while housesitting for a friend, as relaxed as he could get before the band kicked off its festival season. Read below to learn more about the band’s last year, sunrise sets in Croatia and digging for more sounds.
First thing first, how do you pronounce the band’s name?
We pronounce it “Khrung-bin.” We’ve heard it said many different ways. If you want to be authentically Thai about it, you’d say “Khu-ra-bin,” a little tone thing. But we’re not Thai were from Texas and we say things the way Texans say things (chuckles).
Why did you guys pick that name? I know it translates to “fly” or “airplane.”
When we first started the group we were listening to a lot of Thai funk from the 60’s and 70’s off cassettes. Mainly pulled from this online blog where this guy goes to Thailand and gets all these cassettes and puts them out, it’s amazing. Then we ended up listening to that stuff over and over again and we went out to the barn to rehearse and that’s how it came out. We didn’t really have a name for what we were doing, but at the same time we were learning some Thai words so we could understand what the songs were about. Our favorite word was “khruangbin” and it was just the most fun to say. Someone said, “hey you got a gig coming up, what are you going to be called?” We said we I guess this is what it is. Not only Thai music but super into music from all over the world, as long as it’s funky. We incorporate it all into what we do and kind of the airplane thing is from going from place to place to place and putting it all together.
When you first connected was it as friends and then musicians or the other way around?
Well, me and D.J. worked at the same church for like 10 years, that’s where I met him. He’s been a producer in Houston all of his life, very respected in his community. He’s been doing this for a long time. Whether Paul Wall or Slim Thug, any of that from the folks from our local stuff in Houston. We met playing at church every Sunday for 10 years and would just shoot the shit after rehearsals on Tuesdays. Just chill and relax every week. Eventually I met Laura Lee from a mutual friend and she just came by the house and I was watching something on music from Afghanistan or something. She was like, “Who are you, what are you doing watching this film, can we be friends?” (laughs). Anyone who can be interested in this kind of stuff is totally a friend for me.
Then she started coming to the local hang and we hung out every week for months till Laura Lee and I ever started making music together. Once we did we actually went out on tour with my buddy Joe I’m staying with here in Long Beach, he’s gotta a project called Yppah. Then we opened for Bonobo in 2010 and when we got back Laura Lee was like, “I want to start a band, that was awesome.” So we did and we decided D.J. was probably the perfect third person to play with because he was our best friend. We didn’t really know that he played drums originally, just that he was a musician. We didn’t really need anyone with all types of drummer chops, just someone to hold it down (laughs). Turns out it was his first instrument and he played drums from the start, so he just brings this vast knowledge of music and awareness on how to place things.
You certainly received quite a bit of praise for Universe Smiles Upon You, deservedly so. What were your expectations for that in the months before its release?
Absolutely nothing, I just wanted to put out something good (laughs). We had some kind of deal with this UK label Late Night Tales that put out a bunch of compilations. I was familiar with their work and was very excited to be a part of the whole thing. I didn’t actually expect it to do anything, having been from Texas and seeing countless peers that did not get that lucky chance. We’ve all been putting out records for 20 or 25 years but nothing happened, we did it because we loved it. That’s where we were because the whole resolution of making it big by 20 years old was gone by 21, it was wasn’t going to happen (laughs). This is all just cool for me and I get to play music with my best friends. As far as expectations, I don’t have any. I try to avoid expectations because you’re bound to be disappointed if they don’t go the way you expect them to go.
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.
