One Track Mind

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Under his songwriting alias of Toro Y Moi, twenty-three year old Chaz Bundick is preparing one of the indie scene’s most highly anticipated debuts of 2010. The South Carolinian’s musical adventure began as a bedroom project in 2001 and will see a major milestone with the February 2nd release of Causers of This, his debut long-player on the Carpark Records imprint. Along with acts such as Washed Out, AU, and Neon Indian, Toro Y Moi produces songs within an ineffable framework, manufacturing sounds in a genre that lacks a satisfactory label (at least at present). In this sonic purview, just about anything goes: bits of live or looped original instrumentation, injected snippets of found sound, reappropriating previous works in the form of detuned samples.

Toro Y Moi’s approach leans a little more heavily toward the original composition side of that equation, and it is a tactic which serves Bundick well. On “Blessa,” the LP’s opening track, things begin with a mangled assemblage of instruments–some stuttered tape hiss, a persistent bass note, a mumbled guitar arpeggio, and a fog of vocal oohs–before Bundick uses his voice to ground the song. His singing style is light in force but strong in its sense of melody and works perfectly with the vaporous backing track. A stripped-down drum machine track lends “Blessa” a metronomic beat, until the whole thing transforms into something else entirely just after two minutes in. The final forty seconds are a pastiche of repeated synthesizer tones and gently yet rapidly strummed guitar notes, which end as abruptly as they began. Toro Y Moi is unquestionably not an act for all tastes, but Bundick has undeniable skill and imagination as a songwriter. My guess is that one can expect to hear more of this style emerging as the year rolls on; this could be one of the sounds of this new decade.