Houston, Texas’ multilingual collagists Khruangbin announce their very own remix album, Mordechai Remixes out August 6th and to be released physically October 29th on Dead Oceans, in association with Night Time Stories, Ltd.

Carefully curated by the trio comprised of bassist Laura Lee, guitarist Mark Speer and drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson, each remixer on Mordechai Remixes has a musical or cosmic connection to Khruangbin. Whether it be personal friendships or simply mutual musical appreciation, the selected artists’ reimagining of the band’s 2020 Mordechai album is pure kismet. Kadhja Bonet, who lends her creamy soprano flutters to “Father, Mother Bird” was a fan, along with house legend Ron Trent. Harvey Sutherland and Ginger Roots have both toured with the band, Anderson .Paak and NxWorries. collaborator Knxwledge sampled “White Gloves” on a mixtape, Natasha Diggs and Soul Clap are recent friends of the band, Quantic is a mutual friend of Bonobo who is crucial in the band’s origin story, Lee is godmother to one of Felix Dickinson’s kids and Bill Brewster, one half of the DJ duo Mang Dynasty, has known Lee for years.

Entering the tight-knit world of a Khruangbin song can be daunting task, though it has been done – previously in 2016, with the highly collectible EP on Boogiefuturo, the off shoot label of Bristol-based Futureboogie Recordings, with a special collaborative 12″ disc featuring remixes/re-edits from a veritable line up of cutting edge producers including DJ Milo, Maribou State and more. Khruangbin has created an entire universe in which they seem to function telepathically in the way the genre-bending music is composed, arranged and played to the audience. To mess with their delicate ecosystem can invoke feelings similar to that of an unwanted guest crashing a good-time party. But Khruangbin reassures, “We write our music to be interpreted; this is another wonderful interpretation of the music. There is something very vulnerable about letting others work on your music,” they continue. But through the correspondence with the different artists, we gained a bigger connection to the songs themselves.”

A recurring visual theme, and further tethering of the remixers to the band, Laura Lee has also hand drawn inner gatefold illustrations of each remixer. Also, over the past couple months Khruangbin has been in the process of releasing a very limited number of 12” records in select record stores. There has been zero promotion or announcement of these 12’s inches until now, and it’s one for the heads, honoring the electronic music sphere’s word of mouth tradition of releasing music.   This Sunday, June 27th, the band will debut their Khruangbin Curates live set on Boiler Room with three sets from Mordechai remixers – Kadhja Bonet, Felix Dickinson and Ron Trent. 

Photo Courtesy: Pooneh Ghana