Excerpt from Untitled (Secret Sequel): Khruangbin at Union Transfer 11/09/25

Short of it: Khruangbin’s Philadelphia show put the band’s talent on display, showcased their peaceful, welcoming attitude, and featured a performance that will hopefully stay with the band and its audience for years to come.

(Photo Credit: Camelia Hairane)

Disclaimer: I am eleven days into my annual novel-writing month. In this excerpt, my character, Cerise, is trying to explain to readers how she sees the world and uses a concert experience as an example. While my story is fiction, my description of Khruangbin at Union Transfer is accurate.

A Fictionalized Non-Fiction Review

I am an empath with synesthesia. Emotions are all around me, and instead of just feeling them, I see and hear them. The easiest way for me to share is by giving an example of a powerful moment. This one happens to be one of my greatest memories.

November 9th, 2025, I was lucky enough to attend a concert. By that point, I had only been to ten or fifteen; live music just wasn’t my thing. It wasn’t that I didn’t like going to performances; they were just overstimulating for all the wrong reasons when all I wanted to do was hang out and socialize. However, in a fortunate twist, I and the woman I was dating were in a small fight. She had acted like it was a chore to go to a concert with me, even though I knew it was one of her favorite activities. I was jealous—I’m not afraid to say it—and she was indifferent. When I said, “I just want to share an experience with you,” she responded by saying, “Cerise, it’s not you. I worked all day and am a little tired.”

“But you’re always excited when you go with your friends,” I said. Youth is wasted on pathetic behavior.

“God,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Smile. Look happy to be with me.”

Then she said it. “Cerise, you are just being too damn sensitive. None of this has to do with you.”

Since we were standing in line and I didn’t want to be the asshole crying, I stonewalled her. But she either didn’t give a shit or was so unaware that she had no idea what was happening. (Sorry, I don’t normally speak so negatively about people, but this woman was . . . ugh!)

After a couple of minutes of silence and the line not moving, a woman came around with party hats and horns.

“What’s the celebration?” I asked, being uncharacteristically outgoing.

“It’s Mark’s birthday,” she said. “The guitarist,” she added, just in case we did not know.

She gave me a hat and gave both of us a horn, directing us when to blow it.

A man standing behind us in line, a rich and brilliant orange, said, “Do they normally do this?”

Typically, I would have let my date answer because I would have figured that the person was speaking to them, but I jumped in before she could say anything. “I’ve been to ten or fifteen concerts, and this has never happened.” I wished I could see my color.

“He’s talking about Khruangbin,” my date—I’m sorry if it bothers you, but I refuse to share her name. Not to protect her identity, but because I don’t think she deserves to have a name in my story—said to me with a face like I smelled of sulphur.

“No,” the friendly man said. “I’m just speaking in general.”

Although my date froze up, I chatted with the man and his companion—I found out his name was DW, and his partner’s name was Doria—until we separated from them at the security check.

The venue looked old to me, and for the first time in my life, I saw remnants of mandalas past on the ceiling, as if the energy in the building had been so intense that it had left its mark on the plaster. (I know I am jumping a little ahead of myself, but I think you will understand when I get there.)

Being in large crowds is overwhelming to me, but also interesting. If I unfocus my eyes and look at nothing in particular, I see colors that remind me of those early, blurry, deep-space pictures from Hubble. Most of the colors bleed into each other, but a couple stand out, like they are the bright stars. Sometimes, but not always, there are spots that are absent of color, like black holes. Although my date likely had a clear red color—I think she was hypersexual—I’m going to say that she was a psychic vampire, draining the energy of the people around her like a black hole.

The opener was a man named Devon Gilfillian. His music was a little bit Black Keys, and he was a little bit Lenny Kravitz. He brought great energy, was full of orange and yellow colors, and sprayed small orbs of energy from his guitar at the audience, as if he had a fire hose. His bassist looked like one of my college friends, and his drummer looked like a man I had bartended with. If I believed that I was living in a matrix, I would have thought that it was recycling characters from my life.

The pause between the opener was brief, and instead of talking to my date, I talked to the people around me. They shared colors with the majority of the people at Union Transfer, but one of them, a quiet woman who just smiled, had one of the most brilliant emerald greens that I had ever seen. I think that the energy from the concert and standing near her healed me in ways that I am still just recognizing.

When Khruangbin began, the first three songs were from their updated and recently released The Universe Smiles Upon You ii, and when I closed my eyes, I felt like I was on a sunny, summer day float, down a peaceful and calm river. The light warmed my skin, and I worried about nothing. And for some strange reason, I saw the mandala of Pink Floyd’s “Country Song (The Red Queen Theme),” with ornaments of “Grandchester Meadows,” blend with the mandala that Khruangbin’s energy was painting on the ceiling. (See, I’m slowly bringing that back in.)

The music became funkier, edgier. In a dream or a past life regression, I remember being at a Khruangbin show. For some reason, my mind goes to September twenty-third, twenty twenty-four. And while I remember the music and the energy being clean, it did not create the same sexy, baby-making, intense red energy. Possibly because the stage was more spread out, had giant props, and had too much room in between the band members. However, at the Union Transfer show, I was not distracted by anything other than Laura Lee as she was bouncing and bobbing. She was sexy, enticing—a female bird performing a mating dance—and her energy was doing something I had never seen. It gently, quietly hypnotized while reaching out, looking like a rainbow hand signaling, “Come here, love,” with one finger. “I will treat you like you’ve never been treated.” My body was tingling. I wanted to be in her arms.

(Photo Credit: Camelia Hairane)

I looked at my date, who was unconsciously trying to pull me in, but unlike Laura Lee, she was a black hole that would devour me whole. I turned from her, noticed the emerald green woman behind me, and kissed her on the lips. She was surprised, and thankfully, the person she was with was her sister. My date, she didn’t even notice.

Flush, warm, and swooning, I turned back toward the stage. Knowing that I had to stop focusing on Laura Lee if I wanted to make it through the show, I began watching Mark Speer on guitar. Yes, it was his birthday. He could have been anywhere in the world, but he was in Philadelphia for the night, sharing his celebration with twelve hundred people he did not know. And he was making his guitar sing. Unlike Devon Gilfillian, orbs did not spray from his instrument. The notes rose like butterflies, but they flew like birds. I imagined Jerry Garcia and Trey Anastasio at their best—I am a dirty hippie at heart—stopping to watch and recognize the Khruangbin frontman.

(Photo Credit: Camelia Hairane)

I felt stupid for a brief second. I was lost in Laura Lee’s movement and missed a whole other part of the show.

Waking up, I watched Donald Johnson on the drums. He was in the back, but that did not take away from his role in the band. While I love bands with two percussionists, one knowledgeable and talented drummer can get a band far.

And the slide guitarist, who played other instruments throughout the show, who was he, I wondered. At that point in my life, I had been aware of Khruangbin for five years, and I did not remember them having another band member. (His name was Will Van Horn, a talented musician who has played with other great artists like Leon Bridges and Jandek, another Houston-based musician.)

A standout memory for me was while they played the song “Il clan dei siciliani,” an Ennio Morricone cover. I closed my eyes and listened. A movie flickered into view. It was Kill Bill: Volume 3. With her saga finished, Beatrix, the Bride, has settled down in a quiet community. She tries to live an everyday life, but her traumas have deeply scarred her. As the Khruangbin song played, I watched Quentin Tarantino’s hero grocery shopping. Because B.B. is at school, Beatrix is all alone. Her PTSD is triggered when she notices another shopper looking at her. She turns away, trying to shake it off, but she sees someone else staring. The camera zooms in on her face and then to her eye. The audience of this fictitious movie understands that we are entering her thoughts, and when we see through Beatrix’s eyes, we realize that she is fantasizing about eliminating all the customers in her local grocery store.

“Retirement, mental drama of everyday living,” I say, even though no one can hear me. And I laugh.

The band played for nearly an hour before giving us any legit lyrics. And everyone is into it. Except for my date. She’s a bitch.

I ignore her and watch how Mark and Laura Lee play off each other. It’s beautiful to see. It matches their music, the colors it produces, and, yes, finally, the mandala.

Realizing that in certain situations, energy produced mandalas, I began to study them and their meanings. There are mandalas that represent the universe, teach, describe time, replicate architecture, and serve as mantras. They all have their own role and purpose. However, the one that Khruangbin produced was a healing mandala. Its purpose is in the name, and the one I saw at Union Transfer on November ninth, twenty twenty-five, was as beautiful and intricate as they come.

I first noticed it when I followed one of the butterfly/bird orbs from Mark’s guitar. It was in no hurry as it rose to the ceiling of the venue. When it reached its highest point, the energy began to blend with other orbs from Laura Lee’s bass, DJ’s drums, and Van Horn’s slide guitar. They swirled around, danced to the music, and were as active as the heat rising from the audience. The music, the lyrics, their personal energy, along with the energy from each member of the audience, mingled at the top of the venue like sand on a speaker. It vibrated, bounced, and slowly formed the most intricate and colorful mandala I have ever seen in my life.

You may ask how I know it was a healing mandala. Well, there is no specific, concrete reason why. As Khruangbin finished their final song, “Zionsville ii,” and I watched all the energy sand pieces fall into place, I read the design. The colors had cooled, shifting from orange, reds, and yellows to blues, violets, and whites. The layers and levels looked like rows of lotus flowers, opening, spreading, and blooming. And although the design had solidified, each level moved and rotated. I felt it pulling me. But not like Laura Lee earlier in the show or my date and her black hole, psychic vampire essence. It was pulling the hurt and the pain from my chakras. The ugly thoughts I had of the person I had arrived with drifted away. The anger and hurt I felt from my childhood washed out of my core. For a moment, at the end of that show, I was healed.

(Photo Credit: Camelia Hairane)

Final thoughts from the author: I am aware that I have a romantic way of seeing the world; it is one of my best qualities. I love seeing other people succeed, which makes me a cheerleader-critic. But I am more than that. I know when I see and hear something special, people elevating their craft and rising to lift others. Seeing Khruangbin play at Union Transfer, I could not help but think about the 11/02/96 Phish show. In it, “Crosseyed and Painless” opened another dimension for them, bringing about the funk of ’97 that I love. Or the Dead in ’72, ’77, and ’80. As creators, we continually try to level up and evolve, and I feel fortunate to have witnessed it firsthand with an incredible band like Khruangbin.

(Photo Credit: Camelia Hairane)

Actual Final Thought: I have not stopped listening to their music since the show.