Khun Narin – Electric Phin Band

Description

It all started over a year ago with the caption MINDBLOWING PSYCHE- DELIA FROM THAILANDthe Youtube video that accompanied this headline on the Dangerous Minds Blog was exactly that. Here was a group of Thai musicians being filmed parading through a remote village hundreds of miles away from Bangkok playing some of the heaviest Psych known to mankind out of a crazy homemade sound system. Who were these men and how on earth was this not some unearthed archived footage from the 60s or 70s?! The Youtube clip quickly made its rounds amongst music enthusiasts leaving many in the Western hemisphere to question who this group of contemporary Thai villagers (loosely named Khun Narins Electric Phin Band) was.

Khun Narins Electric Phin Bands membership is always in rotation and spans several generations, from high school kids to men well into their 60s. A standard engagement has the band setting up at the hosting household during the morning rituals, playing several low-key sets from the comfort of plastic lawn chairs occasionally working-in a cover version of a foreign classic (The Cranberries Zombie is a recent favorite) while the beer and whiskey flows freely. After a midday banquet, they start up the generator and lead a parade through the community to the local temple, picking up more and more partiers along the way. Bandcamp

The group, recorded by one Josh Marcy outside a Buddhist temple in the Phetchabun Province of Northern Thailand, combines the sounds of a handmade electric phin (basically a kind of lute) with an ample rhythm section of marching drums. It’s a powerful sound; the music shares rock and roll’s mother-heartbeat propulsion but largely eschews its structures, having much more to do with traditional Thai folk forms. The resulting music is raucous, deft, loud, and awesome. The Quietus

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