Toro Y Moi Y Viva
Radio – these
are the ingredients
for an intoxicating
Me
Plus You 72! The
project can be
attributed to one Chaz
Bundick of
Columbia, SC. Type
this fellow’s name
and/or recording
moniker into a
search engine and
you’ll come into a
deluge of blog posts
and articles on the
21st century
synthpop updates
that this fellow has
been generating for
a year or two now.

With the benefit of
revisionism, Bundick
is taking the clean,
clear pool of sounds
from a bygone 1980s
musical environment
and coloring them in
with influences that
may not have been
prevalent enough at
the time. Artists
like Arthur
Russell, 400
Blows, and other
fringe experimental
electronic producers
championed by
today’s alt-stars
are all slightly
reverberated in Toro
Y Moi creations,
whose emotional
palette also
reflects the
yearnings of 20
years worth of indie
music that spawned
genres like
slowcore,
post-rock,
and (pre-Hot
Topic)
emo. Not
quite as progressive
as a Stevie
Wonder or
Shuggie Otis
pop groove, rather
the music relies
on years worth of
access to hip hop
and DJ culture,
which in turn has
offered millions of
listeners access to
funk, soul, rare
grooves, and just
about anything one
would want to
reappropriate for a
cool purpose.

It seems important
to realize that in
this era of
information and
re-imagination,
sampling and
remixing have become
an integral part of
production
techniques. At
times, it sounds
as if a Toro Y Moi
song is recycling
itself, with
original melodies
from sampled sounds
on top of
synthesized drums,
not to mention the
arpeggio flourishes
thrown in for
fanciful measure.
What’s more is that
Chaz seems to toy
with the audio
fidelity of his
tunes, avoiding the
label of lo-fi that
has been quickly
slapped onto
“bedroom pop”
projects and
appropriately
applied to fried
recordings of
Ariel Pink,
John Maus,
etc. (whose
productions are kind
of the precedents of
this new sound),
while proving
just what
technology can do
these days from a
point-and-click EQ
perspective.

Anyway, contained in
this session are 3
short ‘n sweet tunes
- “Talamak”,
“You Hid”,
and “Freak
Love”, which all
fit nicely together
thanks to TYM’s
cohesive, stripped
down setup and are
back to back like a
triptych on the new
Carpark-released
LP, “Causers Of
This”.
Interestingly
enough, the
stimulating
interview segments
w/ Tedward are
noticeably longer
than the tunes
themselves…

This actually marks
the first
performance of the
act as a two-piece,
with Mr. Andy on
board for the live
accompaniment. Would
it be wrong for us
to conclude that
this installment of
M+Y is a fitting
companion to the
Neon Indian
edition of Naked
Fridays? Nah,
it’s *chill*.

Check
it out this
Monday, March
15th!

*

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