Summer Deep Dive: Khruangbin's "A Love International"

"The music you would hear playing inside a lava lamp"

L-R Mark Speer, Laura Lee Ochoa, and DJ Johnson. photo © David Black

Khruangbin (it means “airplane” in Thai) is a Houston band which consists of Laura Lee Ochoa on bass, Mark Speer on guitar, and DJ Johnson on drums. Their music defies easy categorization; it is mostly instrumental and includes elements of funk, surf-rock, and eastern harmonies.

Although I cannot find the writer (which I certainly wish was myself), the best description I have heard of Khruangbin is that it sounds like “the music you would hear playing inside a lava lamp.”

“A La Sala” is the band’s fourth studio album and its first since 2020’s Mordechai, a more experimental effort which included Khruangbin’s first use of vocals. “A La Sala” also uses vocals, but they are generally in support of the languid, guitar- based grooves that characterized Khruangbin’s early work. Laura Lee Ochoa explains:

I used to scream “A La Sala” around my house when I was a little girl, to get everybody in the living room; to get my famil…