Texas-based guitar-centric instrumental band Khruangbin are making waves with their fourth album called A La Sala. It’s very hard to pigeonhole their sound but overall, this album is quite derivative and neo-exotic in scope. Almost completely devoid of intensity, melody or musical direction, the Khruangbin sound borrows from reggae, neo-soul and soundtrack music to a limited degree. Clocking in at 40-minutes, A La Sala is very easy on the ears so it does make for an hour or so of breezy listening.

Musically, Khruangbin is fronted by a trio of fine instrumentalists including Mark “Marko” Speer (guitars), Laura Lee Ochoa (bass) and Donald “DJ” Johnson, Jr. (drums). There was an interesting guitar instrumental band from Georgia in the early 1980s called Love Tractor and the dreamy, neo-psychedelic soul and groove sound of this Khruangbin album has kind of a similar sound. Of course, a lack of musical direction and an ostensible willingness to substitute style for content might limit the band’s wider audience appeal.

It might be easy to target Khruangbin for its seemingly inherent lack of musical focus, yet being adrift on the band’s wave of airy, globalist-tinged, “psychedelic-funk” instrumental guitar sounds does have its plus side, and spending a good 40 minutes or so with the 12 tracks on A La Sala does have a manifestly seductive side to it.