Mistletone

Toro Y Moi: Live From Trona from Primary Colors on Vimeo.

TORO Y MOI TOUR DATES:

• PERTH: March 5 @ Perth Festival. Tickets on sale now.
• VICTORIA: March 10-13 @ Pitch Music Festival. Lineup and tickets info here.

Following extensive touring behind What For?, his fourth studio album as Toro y Moi, acclaimed musician Chaz Bundick brought the band to the middle of the Mojave Desert in April 2016 to play a special concert. Live from Trona documents this experience, recorded live beneath the geological wonders known as the Trona Pinnacles, which formed thousands of years ago in what used to be a prehistoric lake. The album features unique live arrangements of songs from across the band’s catalog, new music, and an expanded band line-up. On the congas, Bay Area multi-instrumentalist Brijean Murphy adds a layer of rhythm, switching between propulsion and deep atmosphere. And for a brand new song, “JBS,” the group is joined by tourmates The Mattson 2. This collaboration between Chaz Bundick and the Mattson twins takes on a classic groove with a jazz fusion approach.

For the film, nine-time Vimeo Staff Pick director Harry Israelson chose to break the fourth wall, revealing the filmmaking process by making equipment, lights, and crew visible at all times. With no audience in attendance and a spectacular natural environment that feels otherworldly, the film pays homage to rock films of a previous era. As the sun sets behind the pinnacles, the supernatural setting seamlessly weaves together with the 13 psychedelic tracks, all recorded on site over the course of an entire day. Through the use of hand-drawn animations and behind-the-scenes VHS footage, Live from Trona offers viewers a surreal concert experience, placing them front row at a private Toro y Moi show.

Born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina, Chaz Bundick has been actively involved in music going back to his early teenage years playing in punk and indie rock bands. Chaz unveiled his Toro y Moi guise in 2001, in which he began incorporating electronics and channeling a wider swath of stylistic influences – from indie rock and ‘60s baroque pop to ‘80s R&B, French house and underground hip-hop – into his own solo music. By the time he graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2009 with a BA in graphic design, Chaz had refined Toro y Moi into a truly unique, captivating project, with numerous music magazines and blogs touting his hazy recordings as the sound of summer. His Mistletone-released debut album, Causers of This, would follow in early 2010 and garnered high praise in many publications including NME and Pitchfork.

Chaz Bundick has proven himself to be as prolific as he is diverse with his subsequent records, always pointing Toro y Moi in new directions while never sacrificing his melodic sensibility or keen ear for arrangements and texture. With 2011’s Underneath the Pine, he delivered a set of motorik space-age funk, trading the smeared production of Causers of This for a more crystalline sound that was still steeped in atmosphere, even without the aid of source material and drum machines. Toro y Moi’s Freaking Out EP, which came out later that year, brought ‘80s-inspired R&B, freestyle, and quiet storm soul into the 21st century via its shimmering digital sheen, and set the stage for 2013’s introspective Anything in Return, which effortlessly glided between smoky 4/4 house-tinged pop, electro-funk and late-night electronic soul.

Toro y Moi’s new album, What For? (out now on Mistletone via Inertia), was written and recorded over the course of eight months at his home studio in Berkeley, CA, with Chaz’s meticulous production capturing the feel of a rock band playing together in the same room. Stereo-panned guitars sit high in the mix next to buzzing synthesizers, funky keys and live drumming, with members of his touring group as well as guest musicians like Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban Nielson and multi-instrumentalist Julian Lynch all contributing to the sessions.

While Chaz cites Big Star, Talking Heads and Todd Rundgren, as well as the psychedelic soul of Brazilian legend Tim Maia and the ‘70s-era jazz-funk of France’s Cortex, as some of the inspirations behind What For?, these names just act as signposts dotting Toro y Moi’s vivid musical landscape. Even as this may be his most direct outing to date, the nostalgia and reflective essence of these songs remain very much his own.

“I’ve done electronic R&B and more traditional recorded type R&B stuff. I just wanted to see what else was out there,” Chaz says in describing the direction of the new album. “It’s all coming from the same mindset and point of creativity. It’s just me trying to take what I already have, and then taking it further.”

Toro y Moi pic by Jordan Blackmon