Khruangbin - The Universe Smiles Upon You ii (Limited Edition on Double Translucent White Vinyl)

Khruangbin have re-recorded their debut album, once a cult classic, now to be known as The Universe Smiles Upon You ii. The recording reinvents the familiar songs, bringing the band’s 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. “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: “Let’s 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 it was first conceived ten years earlier. Though the conditions were the same–dirt floor, brutally cold, minimal sound isolation, all takes live–the songs aren’t. They’re re-approached, some changed more than others, harnessing the same lightning-in-a-bottle energy while discovering what would be unique this time around, in this stage of the band’s 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, rattles and creaks of the barn and all. It’s a tapestry of small movements in nuanced arrangements, slowly revealing the new life, stories and character of someone you’ve met again for the first time in ten years.