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It all started over a year ago with the caption “Mindblowing psychedelia from Thailand” - the Youtube video that accompanied this headline on the Dangerous Minds website 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 soundsystem.

Six months after that first encounter with Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band, a Los Angeles music producer named Josh Marcy used Facebook and interpreters at his local Thai restaurant to get in contact with the band and inquire whether they’d be interested in having him travel to their town to record their music for a global audience. At first the band was naturally suspicious, but through subsequent interactions the group’s leader and namesake Khun Narin (also known simply as “Rin”) warmed to the idea of having Marcy come visit.

Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band’s 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 while the beer and whiskey flow freely.

Now Innovative Leisure bring us the debut release from Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band, whose music is described by Dangerous Minds as "indescribably beautiful psychedelia". This recording features the band playing a traditional three-stringed lute and using effects pedals, distortion and digital delay, with Fender pickups installed into the lutes' hardwood bodies. It combines heavy psychedelia with rock and electrically modified traditional instruments.

Recommended for fans of William Onyeabor, Ravi Shankar, Os Mutantes, Jimi Hendrix, Mulatu Astatke, Buena Vista Social Club, Ry Cooder, Tinariwen etc. 

Videos of Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band have been featured in The Wire, the blog of globally renowned experimental radio station WFMU, and the popular technology and culture website Boing Boing.