Showing posts with label alternative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alternative. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

MUSIC: Khruangbin - May Ninth (Official Video)

The latest tune just dropped from Khruangbin. As is often the case with this band, it's just harmonic beauty.

Lyrics:

Waiting for May to come
Hoping for the rain
A memory held too long
Just another day

Oh what it could be
Oh what a dream to me

Memory burned and gone
A multicolored grey
Waiting for May to come
Happy for the rain

Date posted to YouTube: Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Length: 3 minutes, 14 seconds

- Pseudo Boethius

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

MUSIC: Khruangbin: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert


My favorite jazz-funk band: Khruangbin. I think it's pronounced "Krung-bin". They are out of Houston, Texas.


A very unique sound, as they are very much influenced by world music, espeically African and Asain.

This trio from Houston, Texas is heavily inspired by 1960s and '70s funk and soul from, of all places, Thailand. That musical passion has taken them on a journey that, these days, incorporates music from Spain, Ethiopia and the Middle East. Khruangbin's largely instrumental music is grounded in Laura Lee's bass, with Mark Speer playing those melodic, richly reverbed guitar sounds and Donald "DJ" Johnson on drums and piano.

Two of the three songs performed at this Tiny Desk Concert are from their 2018 album Con Todo El Mundo, which is dedicated in part to Laura Lee's Mexican-American grandfather. He'd often ask her how much she loved him and the response that pleased him most was when she would say, "con todo el mundo," (with all the world.)

The third track in this performance is one of the band's first forays into vocals, from their 2015 debut album, The Universe Smiles Upon You. "White Gloves" gently pays homage to a "classy lady" who was "a fighter" and who "died in a fight." Its open-ended lyrics could imply a battle that was violent or an illness. It isn't clear. What is clear is the reverence in the song and in this music — music that strays from typical instrumental songs with heavy beats. This is music to sway to and to lift you beyond the day to day.

Date posted to YouTube: May 23, 2018
Length: 11 minutes, 32 seconds

- Pseudo Boethius