Khruangbin - Mordechai

Mordechai is the third studio album by American funk & soul trio Khruangbin, released in June 2020 via Dead Oceans.

Khruangbin are from Houston, Texas and comprise Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar, and Donald Ray "DJ" Johnson Jr. on drums. The band is known for blending global music influences, such as classic soul, dub and psychedelia.

By the summer of 2019, the Houston group had been on tour for nearly three-and-a-half years, playing to audiences across North and South America, Europe, and southeast Asia behind their acclaimed albums The Universe Smiles Upon You (2015) and Con Todo El Mundo (2018). They returned to their farmhouse studio in Burton, Texas, ready to begin work on their third album. But they were also determined to slow down, to take their time and luxuriate in building something together.

Musically, the band’s ever-restless ear saw it pulling reference points from Pakistan, Korea, and West Africa, incorporating strains of Indian chanting boxes and Congolese syncopated guitar. But more than anything, the album became a celebration of Houston, the eclectic city that had nurtured them, and a cultural nexus where you can check out country and zydeco, trap rap, or avant-garde opera on any given night.

In those years away from home, Khruangbin’s members often felt like they were swimming underwater, unsure of where they were going, or why they were going there. But Mordechai leads them gently back to the surface, allowing them to take a breath, look around, and find itself again. It is a snapshot taken along a larger journey - a moment all the more beautiful for its impermanence. And it’s a memory to revisit again and again, speaking to us now more clearly than ever.

This album is on standard black vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve with a printed inner sleeve and download code, pressed in the US via Dead Oceans.