Khruangbin Is The Sweet Spot of a Venn Diagram we all want to live within

Khruangbin’s new album A la Sala is the Sweet Spot of a Venn Diagram we all want to live within.

When a frazzled interviewer (me) hopped onto a Zoom call with our interviewee— DJ (Donald Johnson) the smooth, sun-glassed drummer of Khruangbin to talk about the band’s latest release, A la Sala, within a few minutes of speaking to him, my flooding cortisol levels had instantly dropped. He’s the kind of person whose soothing lilt not only immediately calms, but in true gentleman fashion reflectively pauses before he speaks, giving you space to completely finish your own sentence before he thoughtfully launches into his. The effect is startling in its rarity and one that lets you know that he really is absorbing what you’re saying, even though, that’s meant to be your job here.

It’s a quality that he’s known for in Khruangbin too. His signature drumming, rather than taking the lead, is the atmospheric backdrop that supports his bandmates’ psychedelic and funk-forward grooves—Mark Speer on guitar, and Laura-Lee on bass—complementing their intricate melodies and basslines and laying a deep foundation for them to bounce and glide off. And yet Kharaghubin’s music as a whole, implores you to listen a little harder too. Low on lyrics, it lets you tune into the subtle instrumental shifts that dance, collide, and head-tap between genres, textures, and global musical traditions.

And now, after two collaborative albums with two different artists—Leon Bridges and Vieux Farka Touré—A la Sala is Khruangbin’s coming home, family album, the first one since the collabs that reunites just the three of them, the first recorded outside of their mythical barn space, but one whose dreamy hypnotic grooves, immerses you across cultures and landscapes, from the laidback environs of your living room. With it, they’ve hit the band’s ultimate sweet spot, a Venn diagram of sound that encapsulates the longing for home with the thrill of the journey.

Hey DJ, congratulations on the new album!

Thanks so much!

So, I know that A la Sala is touted as a coming home for you guys and that Laura [Lee, Khurangbin’s bass player] said it’s a ‘remembering of who you are and a kind of album that can only be made with family’. I was wondering what felt so right about making this album now.

I think this album at this time came naturally for us to do it the way that we did it. I’ll often speak of albums being of where you are, and where we are, at the moment that it’s made. So, we couldn’t have made anything else at this time, I believe. At least not honestly. If you’re making honest art and you’re being true to yourself and who you are, whatever that may be at any given time that you’re making it, you make what you feel in the moment.

How has your perspective changed from when you were making A la Sala to now when you have had a chance to look back?

The last couple of releases we had were collaborations with other very talented artists, one being Leon Bridges and the other being Vieux Farka Touré. When you collaborate with any group project, there are a lot of other thoughts and opinions you have to take into consideration. We were just kind of longing to get back to working in an intimate fashion with just the three of us, not because the collaborations were bad, we had a great time working with Vieux and working with Leon—it was amazing. But it just gave us a longing to get back to square one in the fashion that we made music when we first started.

The theme and idea of this album is so much about ‘home’. Even the artwork, which has seven different covers all taken from a living room but with windows that offer a look into different dreamscapes. I know for me that when I travel a lot and then go back home, it enables me to reassess and gauge where I’m at that moment. It must be exciting too to return to this touchstone of the three of you, having learned from those collaborations and potentially experimenting with that.

Yeah, I mean I know specifically working with Vieux—his recording process was different to the way we were accustomed to working. He works very fast. He’ll record, he’ll do one or two takes, and then he’ll do the next song. We are very contemplative, we beat ourselves inside the head asking, ‘Is this really good?’, ‘What do we need to change?’, ‘Is this okay?’ He's very free, he’ll say ‘Oh that sounds great, let’s move on.’ I remember in the moment us being like, ‘Really is that it?’, ‘Is that good?’ – just doing the thing that we always do. Lo and behold it was okay, we did okay. So that’s something that you learn along the way.

Also speaking of home being a touchstone, I think this is an album you can only make at home. Being that Mordechai [Khurangbin’s last album with just the three of them] was recorded in 2019 we were touring extensively and the sound of that record sounds like we were on tour, specifically speaking to how polished it is. Because as a musician when you’re playing and you’re touring night to night for audiences, you become this well-oiled machine and there’s a special cohesiveness you develop as a band because you’re playing all the time. That’s kind of where we were at when we recorded Mordechai, we were just a well-oiled machine at that point, just playing a tonne of shows.

But 2023 [the year A la Sala was recorded] happened to be a year off the road for us, a year at home, and I think this was sonically the appropriate thing to make during an off year with us not being on the road. Granted, we weren’t as well-oiled as we had been in the past because I think when we went into the studio in March, we hadn’t played a show since early December in New Zealand and Australia. We took a few months off and of course, during those few months the rust starts to reveal itself and once you get back together, you realise, ‘Oh we haven’t been playing every night,’ and it sounds like it. Eventually, you get back into it and the writing process starts to happen, and things start to flow. 

I’m low-key obsessed with the barn where you guys usually record your albums because I’ve heard so many stories about it. I think the reason why I love this notion of it is that it feels like the band’s own private universe because only you record there, so I imagine that it sonically holds all your secrets. Was it important because this was a homecoming album for you to record there and is it important for you to have a space like that since the three of you live in different areas now too?

So strangely enough this was the first record we’ve recorded outside of the barn. It’s the first album we made that weren’t able to go to there, specifically because the barn is a bit of a mission to get to, so strategically and logistically it didn’t make sense for us to go there, as it would’ve taken a week out of our schedule.

But speaking of things we learned from the collaborations, we learned that we could make music together outside of the barn because those [albums] were recorded at our engineer’s studio in Huston. So, we were confident that we could get the sound that we wanted. The barn had very much so become a crutch for us, almost like the fourth member of the band—we had to have it. And it’s still that special place to us, but we were confident we could sound like us without being in that location. And what we learned, throughout the collaborations and recording is that we sound like us no matter where we are. The barn is home, but home is really wherever the three of us gather to play. That’s the sweet spot.

I know that when you first started with Khruangbin, you hadn’t played the drums too much even though it was the first instrument you ever played so the kind of drumming that you did has so often been referred to as one of ‘restraint’. Now that you’re a well-oiled machine is it hard for you to keep that level of restraint when you play?

I’m not a busy drummer by default. I’m not a flashy, lots of chops, technical guy. I tend to play bass more on feel and I’m always attentive to how things feel. I consider myself a listener. I actually learned this concept through playing basketball. A wise basketball player once told me you have to be on the court and also watch the game at the same time. So, when you’re on the court, visualise looking at the game from a camera’s perspective and see everything that’s happening at the same time.

To translate that thought process to making music, I also have that same top-down listening perspective as a drummer playing in a band with other band members. So not only am I a part of the game so to speak, but I’m also a spectator. And as a spectator when someone does something that’s clearly out of line, you can call someone out and say, ‘Why’d you do that, you shouldn’t have done that.’ And if you keep that perspective, it tells you where you should be going, and defines the moves you should be making. It may be a restraint to some people because there are people who have a large drumming vocabulary and know how to do a tonne of tricks, but I just didn’t chase after that stuff. I don’t think it’s minimalistic at all to me, I don’t think I’m showing restraint, I’m just doing what I do.

SC / I think what is interesting about the way you collaborate is that it reminds me of those drawings where someone draws the head, and you fold the piece of paper and someone draws the middle, and they fold the piece of paper and someone else draws the feet, but together they all make a whole. You’ve got that as a band where you each go away and add your personal style and touch to the music in your own space and time. To me, that’s so unique. What do you think this allows for in your music, that process?

In a way it allows for our diversity because our three unique styles and approaches to making music are completely different. But we always like to say that Khruangbin in itself is the Venn diagram of our three unique tastes and perspectives. It’s why it lends itself to being universal because it keeps things from being one note and just one way. When everyone’s involved and everyone’s input is put into consideration, I do believe it makes for a better end product because it’s not so one note. We often have this thing to say, ‘The best idea wins no matter where it comes from.’ So, if I have an idea, and someone else comes up with a clearly better idea, the best idea wins. It’s a way for us to curate ourselves internally and ensure that we’re always doing the right thing.

I love the way you talk about your drumsticks, that after you’ve used them for a long time the combination of your sweat and the wood oil helps to mould them into the perfect shape which is hard to let go of, but you still give them away to fans. And I was wondering whose perfectly moulded drumsticks would you like to have.

I would say Ed Greene. He holds a special place for me because when I was younger, my mum listened to a lot of Barry White & Love Unlimited Orchestra records. And my mum would sit me down on my kid’s drum set and I’d play along to those records, and Ed Greene was the drummer on those records. He’s very influential to my playing. I still listen to a lot of Ed Greene even to this day.