Intense Records

THE UNIVERSE SMILES UPON YOU II (Clear Vinyl)

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£29.99 (£35.99 incl. VAT)

Khruangbin have re-recorded their beloved debut album, once a cult classic, now to be known as TUSUY ii. The recording reinvents the familiar songs, bringing the bands masterful live show and a decade of touring the world to this genre-defining work.

If you could go back in time ten years, what would you want to tell yourself? This was a question Khruangbin posed to themselves when approaching the ten-year anniversary of their debut album, the once cult classic, now genre-defining work The Universe Smiles Upon You. If we could go back and tell ourselves how much was going to happen to us after that record, what would we want to celebrate? asked Laura Lee, bassist, vocalist, and founding member of the band. Instead, they thought: Lets do it again.

The Universe Smiles Upon You ii was recorded on January 4-6, 2025, in the same family barn of guitarist Mark Speer, across the same dates where TUSUY was first conceived ten years earlier. Though the conditions were the samedirt floor, brutally cold, minimal sound isolation, all takes livethe songs arent. Theyre re-approached, some changed more than others, harnessing the lightning-in-a-bottle energy of TUSUY while discovering what would be unique this time around, in this stage of the bands life.

The result moves like ripples on the water across ten hypnotizing tracks, the barn creating a sense of spaciousness, serenity and creative freedom, nearby wildlife (listen out for the birds on August Twelve ii), rattles and creaks of the barn and all. Its a tapestry of small movements in nuanced arrangements, slowly revealing the new life, stories and character of someone youve met again for the first time in ten years.