WELCOME

Welcome to Erazer Magazine! Born from a love of music and the arts, our aim here at Erazer is to bring you the best in new music, live reviews, album/single reviews, interviews, promotions from all over the UK!

Find out more here.

EDITORS
Editor / Photographer
JOIN US

Do you share our mutual love for all things music and the arts? Consider yourself a budding journalist, photographer or both? Do you have ideas that you’d like to turn into features? If so, drop an email to the following address and let’s discuss further.

editor@erazermag.com

Khruangbin

Khruangbin announce first studio album in four years!

Musical polymaths Khruangbin return today with the announcement of A LA SALA or “To the Room” in Spanish — the band’s fourth studio album and first LP in four years out April 5th on Dead Oceans in partnership with Night Time Stories Ltd. Also out today is lead single ‘A Love International’ illustrating the reflective, celebratory nature of A LA SALA with its wistful vocal flutterings underneath a propelling guitar and bass duet. After a decade spent cultivating an elusive, yet extraordinary musical path, ‘A Love International’ arrives as both a nostalgic and poised step forward for Khruangbin – a vista for a band posing subtle questions about the surreal nature of art’s representation and one’s own reality. Watch the video for ‘A Love International’ directed by Scott Dungate and listen following the track’s debut on Apple Music’s New Music Daily.

As their own live show grows its steadfast following, with Khruangbin unveiled on the Bonnaroo and Latitude lineups already announced for 2024, the band has in turn established themselves as a ubiquitous cultural force, earning co-signs from musicians across genres and generations including Questlove, Flea, Tina Weymouth, and David Byrne, and earning countless syncs in popular television, (A Murder at the End of the World, Ramy, Barry, Outerbanks), movies (The Holdovers, Palm Springs) and major advertisements (Corona, Propel).

From the get-go, Khruangbin’s journey has been emphatically its own: a sound and visual representation with few precedents, ignoring pop expectations, relying only on internal inspirations, and a multitude of visions. It’s a mindset of penetrating the self, connecting to the surrounding world, modeling your own life experiences. The building blocks then for A LA SALA’s 12 songs were jigsaw pieces found in Khruangbin’s creative past, parts of the band not lost, but not yet tapped into. Having stockpiled ideas originally set down as off-the-cuff recordings (voice-memos made at sound-checks, on long voyages, as absentminded epiphanies), they began fitting those pieces together in the studio for A LA SALA.

Some results fold directly into A LA SALA’s down-home feel. ‘Three From Two’ and ‘May Ninth’ are plaintive mid-tempo numbers, with guitar melodies that reside somewhere between Bakersfield and by-the-riverside, cues that, for all its borderless inclusivity, another core Khruangbin value is being steeped in American roots. And in the landscape that music comes from. Like all albums prior to Mordechai, Marko made sure environmental sounds — natural and man-made — appeared as textures. (At times philosophically: the group recorded while cricket chirps played in their headphones, presumably for terroir.) It’s how A LA SALA achieves such interconnected set-and-setting-ness.

Other results are more metaphorical, especially in Khruangbin’s flirtation with ambient spaces. The dramatically beatless ‘Farolim de Felgueiras’ and ‘Caja de la Sala’ both feature only Marko’s unmistakable guitar dueting with Laura Lee’s Moog, lightly layered with sounds of shoes on stone steps, and cicadas in an open field. The closing ‘Les Petits Gris’ more fully reduces and fleshes out the ambiance, with a piano and a simple single-note bass pattern, Marko’s plaintive spare guitar echoing the melody of a ballerina-turning music box. It feels an apt way of ending — as a passing of this particular moment, preparation for the next one, soon-come.

There are seven different covers that will adorn A LA SALA’s various vinyl editions available for pre-order which offer a throughline from the music into Khruangbin’s current frame. Designed by the band using Marko’s multitude of travelog photos, and inspired by the surrealism of Belgian artist René Magritte, there are windows from the band’s living room onto a set of daydreams, scenes of impossible skies, external glances illuminating what is going on inside. These directly coincide with David Black’s images of DJ, Laura Lee and Marko which accompany A LA SALA, and see the band and a window, being both the observer and the observed. A LA SALA is all about looking out and looking back, in order to better look ahead.

Over the last two years Khruangbin has remained unwavering in their musical vision, selling out shows at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre and London’s Alexandra Palace. They’ve released five live LPs showcasing their stage prowess – featuring storied guests such as Toro y Moi, Men I Trust and Nubya Garcia – collaborated with Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré honoring Vieux’s late father, Ali Farka Touré, with the album Ali highlighted everywhere from The New York Times and NPR (“labyrinthine fusion of dub, blues and Malian grooves,”), to GQ who says “there’s a placelessness to the band Khruangbin that, counterintuitively, gives them their gravity.” That same year the band released their second collaborative EP with Leon Bridges, the sultry, chart-topping Texas Moon, which arrived to widespread acclaim from The New York Times, NPR, Uproxx, Vulture, FADER while pushing the boundaries of psychedelic R&B.

Related Posts
Lock In
Read More

LOCK-IN new single and headline tour

LOCK-IN are continuing to consolidate their title as ‘ones to watch’ in 2024. Having just SOLD OUT their biggest London headline show to date at Lafayette on April 27th, the five childhood friends from Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire release their new single ‘Sun Kiss’ today after being picked by Truck Festival to play The Market Stage and absolutely smashing it!
The Last Dinner Party
Read More

The Last Dinner Party announce 16 date UK/Ireland headline tour

The Last Dinner Party are excited to announce details of a 16-date UK/Ireland headline tour for later this year in support of their forthcoming debut album, “Prelude To Ecstasy”. The London based band have enjoyed a whirlwind twelve months, most recently announced as winners of both the BBC Radio 1 Sound of 2024 and the BRIT Rising Star Award. Ahead of a celebratory headline show at London’s Roundhouse on the evening before album release, they’re pleased to share another stint across the country in September and October.
Courting
Read More

Courting bring us new album ‘New Last Name’ + UK Tour

Liverpool four-piece Courting release their critically acclaimed new album “New Last Name”. To mark the album’s release the band have shared a new song titled “The Wedding” and have announced details of a new hometown headline show (with support from FEET) at The Hanger, Liverpool on 24th May. Having sold out their last hometown show within just ten minutes of announcement, and with it following their forthcoming EU / UK tour, the performance promises to be one to remember.
junodream
Read More

junodream drop highly anticipated debut ‘Pools Of Colour’

Dream rock four piece junodream have released their eagerly awaited debut album Pools of Colour - a magnificent, deeply immersive record, offering an otherworldly escape. Out now via AWAL Recordings, Pools of Colour features previously released singles ‘The Oranges’, ‘Kitchen Sink Drama’, ‘Death Drive’ and ‘The Beach’, plus six brand new tracks. In our modern existence where individualism at all costs is encouraged, the power of the community and the whole is often lost - with their debut full length, junodream invite you to enter their universe with total submission, seeking that beautiful escape that’s become so hard to find.