Due to concerns about the impact of Hurricane Sandy, the Toro Y Moi album listening event in NY will be pushed back one week to the weekend of Nov. 9-11. It was announced last week that Toro Y Moi and Red Bull Music Academy will be teaming up this November to give fans the opportunity to hear his upcoming third album, Anything In Return, more than two months in advance of release through a unique experience that will take place at Project Parlor in Brooklyn and Public Works in San Francisco. At these gallery events, 13 original drawings from Chaz Bundick will be on display, each paired with a corresponding song from the album that fans can listen to via Incase headphones. “I just wanted to do something fun for this album release,” says Bundick. These events, conceived by Bundick himself, will be free and open to the public.
The product of a move from South Carolina to Berkeley, CA and the subsequent extended separation from loved ones, Toro Y Moi’s third full-length, Anything in Return, puts Chaz Bundick right in the middle of the producer/songwriter dichotomy that his first two albums established. There’s a pervasive sense of peace with his tendency to dabble in both sides of the modern music-making spectrum, and he sounds comfortable engaging in intuitive pop production and putting forth the impression of unmediated id. The producer’s hand is prominent- not least in the sampled “yeah”s and “uh”s that give the album a hip-hop-indebted confidence- and many of the songs feature the 4/4 beats and deftly employed effects usually associated with house music. Tracks like “High Living” and “Day One” show a considerably Californian influence, their languid funk redolent of a West Coast temperament, and elsewhere- not least on lead single, “So Many Details”- the record plays with darker atmospheres than we’re used to hearing from Toro Y Moi. Sounding quite assured in what some may call this songwriter’s return to producer-hood, Anything in Return is Bundick uninhibited by issues of genre, an album that feels like the artist’s essence.
Since then, Bundick has proven himself to be not just a prolific musician, but a diverse one as well, letting each successive release broaden the scope of the Toro Y Moi oeuvre. The funky psych-pop of 2011’s Underneath the Pine evinced an artist who could create similar atmospheres even without the aid of source material and drum machines. His Freaking Out EP, a handful of singles and remixes, and a retrospective box-set plot points all along the producer/songwriter spectrum in which he’s worked since his debut, and Anything In Return is another exciting offering that shows he’s still not ready to settle into any one genre.
2-02 – Austin, TX – Emo’s East *+
2-05 – New Orleans, LA – One Eyed Jacks *+
2-06 – Atlanta, GA – Masquerade (Heaven Stage) *+
2-08 – Carrboro, NC – Cats Cradle *+
2-09 – Richmond, VA – The National *
2-10 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club *+
2-11 – Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer *+
2-13 – New York, NY – Webster Hall *+
2-16 – Montreal, QC – Club Soda *+
2-17 – Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace *
2-19 – Chicago, IL – Metro ^+
2-20 – Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line Music Cafe ^+
2-21 – Lawrence, KS – The Granada Theatre ^
2-23 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater ^+
2-24 – Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge ^+
2-26 – Vancouver, BC – Biltmore Cabaret ^+
2-27 – Seattle, WA – The Crocodile ^+
2-28 – Portland, OR – Wonder Ballroom ^+
