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Khruangbin's fourth studio album, A La Sala (InchTo the RoomInch in Spanish), is an exercise in returning in order to go further, and doing so on your own terms. It continues the mystery and sanctity that is the key to how bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, drummer Donald InchDJInch Johnson, Jr. And guitarist Mark InchMarkoInch Speer approach music. If 2020's Mordechai, the last studio LP Khruangbin made without collaborators, was a party record that enhanced the band's musical reputation far and wide, then A La Sala is the measured morning after. It's a gorgeously airy record completed only in the company of the group's longtime engineer Steve Christensen, with minimal overdubs. It's a window onto the bounties powering Khruangbin's vision, a reimagining and refueling for the long haul ahead. A La Sala scales Khruangbin down to scale up, a creative strategy with the future in mind.The trio's collective musical DNA, the years spent constructing it in Houston's local-meets-global cultural stew, ensures the band continues to sound like no one but itself. A cascade of crisp melodies emanates from Marko's reverb-heavy electric, dancing gently around Laura Lee's minimalist almost-dub bass triangles, while DJ's drums serve as the tightened-up pocket and unwavering dance-floor on which all this movement takes place. Yet there's a freshness to A La Sala's instrumental interactivity, less concerned with getting further out than going deeper in, a profound desire to celebrate the world's external wonders. Where prior albums strived towards music's polyglot edges, such inquiries now sound like beloved intimacies. Here, Khruangbin's sonic touch-points - whether spaghetti-western film scores (on InchFifteen Fifty-ThreeInch), West African discos (on InchPon PónInch), G-funk fantasias (InchTodavía VivaInch), living room dancing moments (the first single, InchA Love InternationalInch), or even
