Since we put a torch to our old site, we’ll be occasionally posting from our archive—including things that were only ever published in our print editions. We’re kicking off with a banger—an interview with our favourite Texan ‘Khru, originally held on the 4th January 2021 for Semi Permanent’s issue on ‘Perspective’

SP: Laura, DJ, Mark. I’ve got five pages of notes and a DVD copy of Con Air on my desk. Are you ready? 

Laura Lee: Let’s do it. 

SP: I wanted to start by offering my interpretation of Khruangbin, which is that it’s not just a band, but a universe that a number of projects fall under…

Mark Speer: That’s so funny, we were just talking about this earlier of whether we were trying to create a universe. We like to self-reference ourselves and things inside this world. But I don’t want to give too much away. I don’t need to know every single cog and gear inside the universe. I just need to know enough so that it holds up; that can be surprisingly little. The less you say, the more the audience can fill in the gaps for themselves and it suddenly becomes more rich and more fun for them. 

SP: Do you think that happened subliminally and only noticeable in hindsight? Or perhaps more deliberate… 

Laura: I think it's both. 

Mark: Yeah, I prefer the latter of making little decisions over time so that we decide what we are instead of external forcing saying it for us.  The audience’s idea of what it means to them is very personal and that's the way it should be. But we need to stay true to our original intention. Otherwise the original educator is lost and you can lose grasp of what was initially created.

SP: So thinking visually, what do you want people to feel when they’re watching a visual work tied to your music?

Laura: Each song we make is naturally tied to some degree of emotion. So for Friday Morning, that’s a love song but not necessarily for a specific person. It’s just a love song. So in that video we wanted to convey what love feels like now. So we sat in a room and asked people that we love to send us recorded video messages. They sent us kind, heartbreaking, funny messages and we captured our responses to it. That was an interesting exercise. But sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s silliness, and we can be all of those things.

Mark: We like to keep things vague. It’s like how you look at a book vs. the movie version of a book. When you are reading the book, as a reader you’re creating your own idea of that world, but in the film you’re just seeing someone else’s idea of what that is supposed to look like. But because the movie is some huge blockbuster, that’s what it becomes. I guess Lord of the Rings is supposed to look like that. I can’t not see Ian McKellen as Gandalf now. I totally get why that can be an issue for any artist trying to create a space for the audience to have their own interpretation.

Laura: Yeah, it’s a huge part behind our decision to not include ourselves in our music videos. It’s as if I look at them as an opportunity to create a different kind of art that’s related to what we do, but if we’re in it then it becomes this self-narrated thing. They can be separate ideas. 

SP: What do you think is a really important influence on your records that isn’t necessarily to do with music?

Laura: Ooh. 

DJ: I’m really inspired by film. Most of the cases that I can think of with songs or lyrical content that were inspired by something were inspired by a VHS tape at the farm. Which probably lends itself to why the things that we do sound cinematic in a sense, because the initial inspiration itself was cinema.

Mark: Big time. I had a lot of art books as a kid. I remember having this book about all the props from Indiana Jones and Star Wars. Going back to film, that stuff is so important in creating the world. If those props didn’t look legit, then you’d be like ‘nah that took me out, I don’t believe it!’. Film makes a huge splash in what we do. And sound design, not just in terms of how things sound, but how they make you feel. That’s different and hugely influential.

Laura: I'm gonna be classic, emotional Leezy and say that our friendship has been a huge part of it! I often think about how our records have really followed the context of our friendship at different points in time. We couldn’t write The Universe Smiles Upon You now because our lives aren’t as simple as they were back then. And we could have never written Mordechai then because that sounds like how we tour today. 

SP: I’ve heard you reference your film inspirations, from Clueless to Romancing the Stone. Mark, I know you’re a big fan of sci-fi. You all covered Morricone at one point or another as well. Can you talk about what you’ve learnt from how film utilises sound design as an audio expression of a narrative, rather than just a song for the purpose of itself?

Mark: Sound design, especially for film, means you need to have noise. If it’s completely silent that means something else entirely. But if you’re sitting outside (and I’m talking in real life) and you don’t notice cars going by, or the wind or the birds, you can hear it. And if you don’t have that stuff in film, then it’s not believable. So we’ve been a huge fan of putting extra noise in our music. Usually field recordings from where we record out in Burton, Texas. Like, a lot of…serenity, you know?

…Was that a reference to The Castle?

Mark: I couldn’t do an interview with an Australian and not throw in a quote from The Castle.

Laura: I feel like sound design is a very Mark-driven aspect. I will send field recordings that I've taken to Mark to place, but I feel like he rules the roost in that sense. 

Mark: Yeah. But it's also like, Leez you know how you play with a lot of space. We don’t record in the studio where it’s quiet, we record in a barn with a lot of noise. And so because the noise is always there we don't feel the need to fill up every single space with notes. 

Laura: Yeah, those noises are really present when we're playing so we need them on the record for it to have the same magic that it did when we were playing them in the barn. 

SP: What movie would you like to re-score yourselves?

Mark: First of all, I’d be terrified to do any movie scoring. But a spaghetti Western would be the shit. That sounds fun. 

SP: Might I suggest Con Air?

Mark: That is a piece of classic cinema.

SP: The music video for your track, Pelota, finishes with a piece by Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. As a band that often does not feature lyrics, can you talk about how the composition of words contributes to your work? 

Laura: The first thing that comes to mind, since we don't use words very often, is that it puts more pressure on them. If we’re going to do it, then it needs to be done right. And I find the process of writing lyrics very similar to the way we write music. But that process is actually really poetic, which is sort of like me word-vomiting on a piece of paper and having the guys pick out the gems and then using that as a starting point. Again, it’s about starting with a feeling.

Mark: I’d say in that sense, it’s gotta have an element of that and just like cutting up and moving around and re-contextualising. And blurring the meaning a little bit. If it's too clear then we’re just giving everything away. You can be ultra specific and still be vague, you know?

SP: Laura, I know Mordechai was really inspired by a hike that you once took in the wilderness, and I think we’re really learning to understand the role that nature plays in creativity more broadly. Can you talk about what that looks like for you?

Laura: The Texan landscape is tied to that sound design thing we’ve been talking about. It's like when you're out there in the barn, you either just see the inside of the barn because it's raining or it's too cold, or you have the doors open and you're seeing rolling hills and cows. It's highly impactful. I think the pandemic has also shown people that nature is important. I mean, it changes your energy and your output because of the influence on your vision. If we were in a basement studio with stickers and graffiti on the walls, I guarantee you White Gloves would not sound the same.

SP: DJ, you and Mark both met while playing at the same church (St. John's Methodist Church) in Houston. What was the impact of growing up in that church, musically speaking?

DJ: Mark and I played at St. John's from about 2005 to 2014. The more we spent playing together, the more time we spent developing the chemistry and connection to know where each person is going without them having to verbally communicate. You know, there was a synchronicity that happened over the years. You can’t fake that, it's a natural thing. It's so hard to describe. 

Mark: It was definitely really hard to do when we first started playing there.

DJ: Actually while Mark played guitar there, I wasn't playing drums but keys, so we were communicating on a different level harmonically; but now it's more rhythmically than harmonically. When Mark's playing, especially rhythmic parts, I try to lock in and quantize to what he’s doing, kinda like beat-matching in a way. But as I was saying, it just happens over nine years that you develop by listening to each other play.

SP: And do you think the church environment accelerated that in itself?
DJ: I think so. When you’re playing in church, it's not really about us as musicians. We're there to provide a service and to, in a sense, be unseen. So it teaches you to focus on serving the music and giving the music reverence and to not be self-serving.

Mark: It also teaches you to practice, because the other thing that you're there to do is to help the congregation reach that point where they can let go. And if you have a bum note in the middle of this ramp that is just so hypnotic… you play a nice, loud, wrong note, they kick you out (laughs). So that's why we tend to have highly skilled musicians in that group, which also goes into talking about the tradition of bringing up the younger musicians inside the church, that's how that works.

I mean, the first time I played in church wasn't when I was like five, but I definitely had been that kid standing on the side, looking at the drummer and by osmosis learning how that works. And then moving on to the next instrument and on to the next one. And if I'm not mistaken guitar is usually like the last one, right DJ? You start on drums, bass, keys, and then the guitar?

DJ: Yeah, that's the usual progression. Guitar was definitely my last stop on the rhythm section. 

Mark: Yeah. And I guess that's probably why I play guitar, but I stopped at keys and was like ‘nah I’m good’ (laughs). Like there were lots of bass players, lots of drummers, hella bass player, hella drummers, a fair amount of key players and like not a whole lot of guitar players. 

SP: This book is about perspective, looking back, looking forward, up, down and across all these different references and finding the space between them. I want to talk about history a little bit. A lot of the music you take inspiration from is in reference to a particular moment in history: for example, pre-revolution Iranian disco, or pre-Taliban Kabul funk. There is this political and historical context to it all. Can you talk about what it’s like to learn about music through history? 

Mark: That’s a big awesome question. I’m gonna point this to you Leezy because one of the reasons we really got into this was through food… 

Laura: Yeah. It initially started when I went to school. I started architecture school because I liked math and art and so that seemed obvious, but it turns out I’m too much of a purist so that didn't work. I then studied art history where I found the area I liked the most was ancient art history, because it was about what you could learn about a particular culture from an object. I thought that that was a really cool art form in its own right. And then I ended up studying history as a result because I just really enjoyed it. So I studied both, and I think now food was a big part of it. I know Mark and I became really fascinated by the Columbian Exchange, which is when food and plants started to disperse and where Italy got tomatoes and all the stuff that they're known for that they didn't have before. 

History is essentially about the exchange of ideas. It’s a really nerdy thing that’s also fun, and when you start to see the world in that way… you see a dish and realise that could never have happened if you didn’t get this product from Mexico and that product from Italy. Then you hear music from Brazil in the 1960s, and you’re like ‘this never would have sounded like this if they weren’t going through a revolution’ because that was their escape. It’s a really beautiful way to experience music…

Mark: Another part of that concept I like is that we do tend to pull music from specific eras. Like you said, it all kind of comes down to basically… for the most part pre-1990, you know? And that's not necessarily because of political strife, but mostly because between the years around 1900 and 1910, maybe 1930, that was like the golden age of cultural coalition. It was where everything is mixing together, where you have these two styles of music that suddenly, because of international travel or international communication, can now be mashed together, and why the heck not?

A part of that does come through political revolution too. Folks in Korea may not have heard American rock n’ roll if it weren’t for the US servicemen out there. But through that you get this awesome new thing that happens. Prior to The Beatles, the biggest act in the UK was The Shadows. They did one of the first world tours, went all over the place. One of the places they went to was Thailand, where they connected so hard with youth culture because kids in Thailand were in-tune with what was happening to youth culture all over the world. 

So these kids are saying ‘well, we can do this. Let’s get some drums, a bass guitar, and we’re going to play some rock n’ roll’. And naturally the music that they're going to pull from, just like we pull from the music of our forefathers and our parents and our ancestors, they're going to pull it from music from their region. And that's how you get Thai rock n’ roll and eventually Thai funk as this amalgamation of like UK twangy surf-rock and other genres, which is awesome. You get this really cool amalgamation of regional Thai melodies with this new thing.

And that is just one example, you know? We just love how that works and it's like, food occurs the same way, music occurs the same way, there's all this fashion that occurs the same way and in art too. People want to talk about how we have to keep things pure. Like ‘Oh, you know, it seems like everywhere you go in Latin America, you only hear Reggaeton’. That’s because it’s popular! People love that shit. I don't want ever want to lose being able to go to certain parts of South America and hearing a very specific regional rhythm. And I think that there are people who right now are like rediscovering, maintaining and keeping that as part of the musical DNA. But I just like the collision of culture. I think that's awesome. That’s how you get really, really delicious food, amazing music, beautiful art and beautiful people.

DJ: Well, it's funny. I was just talking about this the other day. I was recently watching this film called Dead Presidents, centered around the Vietnam conflict (in regards to Mark talking about how music in Korea was bought over by servicemen). It’s like how a bee pollinates a flower. The bee crawls over to get to a flower, collects pollen, then flies over to another one and then drops it over there and this beautiful thing happens that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Mark: You never know who's going to be following what.

Laura: When you were talking about food, I remembered something I’d forgotten about. I remember being really interested in this when I was making Thai food. Like Thailand is one of the few countries that has been independent for their historical existence. And so when you compare it to Vietnam which has been historically trampled on by other countries like the Chinese and the French, there are so many elements of Vietnamese cuisine that you can see where that influence has come through. Especially French cuisine; a Bánh Mì and Pho wouldn't exist without French influence and cooking. When you go to the Thai border, you can see these influences. But in central Thailand, it’s just Thai food and not anything else. All those things are equally interesting. It’s interesting when it’s pure, and it’s interesting when all the other stuff starts to come in, but you can’t have one without the other. 

Mark: But again, what's pure? You know, think about spicy Thai food. I love spicy Thai food. Thai food, so good, so spicy. Well, where the heck does the spice come from? Like cayenne pepper, its ancestor is from where we're from. It's from Northern Mexico, Southwestern United States. You know what I mean? 

Laura: Totally. 

Mark: You couldn't have it without it. I mean, I'm sure Thai food was just delicious before the lowly chilli pepper made its way over there. But that's part of it now.

Laura: Yeah. And like, Khruangbin wouldn't be Khruangbin without the internet. 

Mark: Big time. The great pollinator.

SP: On that note, looking at that history and all the diffusion of culture and food and art and so on, what do you think Khruangbin says about this era right now? 

Laura: The Internet.

Mark: Yeah. We couldn't possibly exist without the tools we have available. From the music that influences us, to the way that we create, it's a lot of like cut and paste. We do a lot of cutting and pasting in electronic doors before we actually ever play a note. You know actually that’s not true… We've just gotta play notes and then do a lot of cutting. And then it just like, ‘Oh, this looks great. Let's learn this.’ And we learn it. There is just a lot of technology involved.  Art history doing other styles of music that were more, I guess, electronic based. 

Laura: There's the technology that we use to make it. And there's the technology we used to be inspired and to listen to other music from different places that we wouldn't normally be able to. But then there's also the harking back to a simpler time. A lot of people are buying vinyl again. I don't think we ever stopped, but there's enough people that I feel like it's not just me. People are clinging onto an old style of doing things because it's more simple and less noisy.

Mark: Which is hilarious because making a vinyl record is so not simple. And I like vinyl records because they make so much more noise.

SP: Actually, this is a question for the three of you, but in different contexts, I wanted to talk about the role of math in your life. Personally, creatively, structurally. Laura, let’s start with you. 

Laura: Math is just patterns. I like them. I like making sense of the chaotic world that we live in and not as this ‘beautiful’ thing, but just that it is what it is. And I like that, because I'm not that complicated. 

It's nice to put things in number form. When I was a little kid, I think the first math-y weird thing I did was that I had this obsessive compulsive thing with my right and left hand: anything I did with my right hand I had to do with my left. So if I opened a door with my right hand, I had to open the next with my left. And then I realised that the pattern started with right, because then I had to go left. And I realised that the pattern started with right, then I had to go left, right. And then I realised I had to go left, right, right, left. And it became like this obsessive thing that I had to cure myself out of. But I actually find that I write bass lines in that same head space. It's like making a pattern. It's a combination of the same pattern in multiple places, but just slightly different. I don't know how else to explain it.

I used to teach kids their timetables and we were looking at the pattern that happens between 1 and 20, and how that makes sense for the rest of the number sequence forever. And that's how I look at my musical parts. Mark thinks in…I don't know, not in numbers?

Mark: Letters.

Laura: Letters and yeah. DJ seems to know how I think and how Mark thinks. And so DJ's the translator between your brain and my brain. 

Mark: True. I have a different understanding of numbers. My numbers are like one, two, three, and then we’re going to go to six, two, three, five. Now we're going to go to three, four, five, back to one, you know, that kind of stuff. But also, I mean, sometimes we're writing a tune and it doesn’t follow those natural number systems. And so I'll be like calling up letter names instead and then it's confusing for everyone, including me. 

DJ: Coming from the drum perspective you don’t play drums without math, especially in traditional pop music or modern music. Laura and I share an interest in numbers, figures and charts. But I specifically like the way numbers fit inside each other in the sense it can become a pattern. A fourth can fit 2:2’s, a a 6th can fit 2:3’s, now let’s play them together, or back to back. 

Its kind of what happened at the end of Friday Morning. It feels like the tempo changes, but the overall pulse never ceases. In a sense, it’s like playing a waltz and a traditional R&B backbeat at the same time. The technical term is called a ‘hemiola’ for those who’d like to dig further. 

SP: I have one last question, which I think will tie all these things together. Tell me all about broader team Khruangbin and the role others play in your success. 

Laura: We have an amazing team that we have worked really hard at building. All you have in life (and certainly in any creative project) is your integrity, and it’s important to choose your teammates wisely to uphold that. Otherwise it can get lost… and I don’t want to lose you guys! If I were to offer advice to anyone in any job, but especially this one, it’s to choose your teammates wisely. Our road crew is a family on its own. And our management and agents and business management team is also a family. They have our backs and sure, they’re flawed like all families are. But it’s us. And it’s an extension of who we are. 

Mark: We have the best team. It definitely feels like a family. It doesn't feel like a bunch of suits, you know? They have our best interests. They know what we want, they know how stubborn I can be, that’s for sure. And, you know, they just deal with us.

DJ: I think one of the coolest parts about our team in all aspects is that there’s a feminine presence, and that plays an important role especially in such a male-dominated industry at times. When we’re on a Zoom call with the team, it feels like everyone is represented, and that’s awesome. 

Mark: I think our team represents where we're from, even though they might not be from Houston, but Houston is a great big global melting pot and our team is a big global melting pot. 

Laura: Especially on the road, it's a real thing. Because you'll find a lot of tour buses look the same. I think when our team gets off the tour bus, it looks very different. And I feel really proud of that.