Toro y Moi warms up “chillwave” music and brings it to Hawaii

Chaz Bundick of Toro Y Moi will play with his band tomorrow night. —Courtesy Photo

Chaz Bundick started out as a teenage musician experimenting in the comfort of his home, assembling and sampling vinyl records and vocals on software for his own lo-fi amusement. He and his music were too ambitious to stay anonymous for long.

After releasing solo material as alter ego Toro y Moi, his work started to gain national attention, particularly in the underground musical blogosphere. And after the hype built up, Bundick assembled a band to take on tour.

His music is much better and richer for it.

Toro y Moi’s debut album, “Causers of This” (2009), broke ground for the electronic-based, somewhat insular subgenre known as “chillwave,” but Bundick, now 25, has since added warmer pop and retro-funk elements, as heard on his new album, the well-received “Underneath the Pine,” released in February.

“Shoegaze R&B” is a description that Bundick has loosely coined for what he does, and regardless of its accuracy, he and the band represent the music well in concert.

Toro y Moi wraps up a U.S. tour with a stop in Honolulu tomorrow night.

CALLING from Chicago, just before soundcheck on a tour stop, the native South Carolinian said he has enjoyed playing with a three-piece backup band (another keyboardist, bassist and drummer) since May of last year. Before that he was playing shows solo, with just his laptop setup.

“At first it was all about trying to figure out things like the drum and bass parts, but by this time everyone definitely knows what to do to contribute to the overall sound,” he said.

Bundick couldn’t have said this when he started doing music as a teenager. He’s said that while his experimentation was pretty random at the beginning, in his early 20s he began to believe his songwriting had gotten better, and now can confidently broaden his sonic palette.

That palette has included Brian Wilson’s more inspired work with the Beach Boys, and baroque film soundtrack and orchestral work of the late 1960s and early ’70s by notable composers David Axelrod and Piero Umiliani.

“I like the versatility of the Italian music,” Bundick said. “Even with vocals it still sounds very instrumental and free-flowing. The melodies are usually very pretty and open-ended. Composers like Umiliani have definitely changed the production qualities of my sound.

“But, on the other hand, guys like J. Dilla (a Kanye West collaborator and favorite among forward-thinking hip-hop heads, who unfortunately died at an early age in 2006) still have an impact on me,” Bundick said, “in the way he takes samples from multiple sources and chops them up, even to the point of reducing them to single notes.”

Bundick and the band are sure to serve up funk-happy sounds from the new album, particularly the groovy “New Beat” and “Still Sound.”

“The live experience of playing music in a live setting is very important to me,” he said. “I love to see people’s reactions to it.”

On the Net:
» toroymoi.blogspot.com

—Gary Chun / gchun@staradvertiser.com