The Art of a Khruangbin Concert

“Syd for Solen” Festival

Khruangbin

Valbyparken- Copenhagen

07 august 2025

Af Lila Malventi

In a sunlight Copenhagen afternoon, I expected Khruangbin to be a gentle drift a meditative soundscape on grass. Instead, the sky darkened, and the stage turned into an illuminated canvas of arches and clouds.

Light spilled in deliberate blocks of red, purple, gold. Smoke curled like brushstrokes.

The wind caught in Laura Lee’s hair and in the guitar strings, turning each note into something moving and alive.

They’re a trio from Texas “Khruangbin” means “airplane” in Thai and true to the name, they don’t arrive, they float. Through dub, Thai funk, Iranian pop, surf shimmer and soul shadows.

The stage was an installation: three tall windows framing dream skies, each note a line, each beat a brush. Minimal, masterful. Measured. It’s music you watch and art you hear. You don’t just listen, you observe, you absorb, you dissolve. Each song is an abstract, evocative, unfinished, inviting you to feel, to color in the spaces with your own memory.

And the way they moved, it was like they knew. Every gesture with their guitars, every turn of the head, every stance, as if choreographed for a photo shoot no one ever told us was happening.

Stillness and precision with just enough motion to look eternal.

And then: “Maria También.”

I expected whispers in sound. Instead, the crowd erupted, jumping in waves, shouting back at the music.

The air pressed with collective movement.

Some danced like they’d been waiting for years, some were still and teary, faces lit in sudden red floods.

It was art in tension, stillness meeting surge. A gallery where the paintings had decided to step down and dance with the audience.

And when it ended, you could still feel the heat of the lights, the chill of the wind, and that strange combination of being both grounded and airborne.