TORO Y MOI
TORO Y MOI
Born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina, 24-year-old ChazBundick (aka Toro Y Moi) has been toying with various musical projects since early adolescence. Having spent his formative years playing in punk and indie rock acts, the protean Toro Y Moi project has been his vessel for further musical exploration since 2001. In his latter years studying graphic design at the University of South Carolina, Chaz became increasingly focused on his solo work, incorporating electronics and allowing a wider range of influences—French house, Brian Wilson’s pop, 80s R&B, and Stones Throw hip-hop—to show up in his music. By the time he graduated in spring 2009, Chaz had refined his sound to something all his own, and music journals across the board touted his hazy recordings as the sound of the summer.
OFFICIAL SITE :: MYSPACE :: FACEBOOK :: TWITTER
Chaz started off 2010, which would prove to be Toro’s flagship year, by releasing his debut, Causers of This, in February. He toured extensively in support of the album, adding two more members—a bassist and drummer—to his live show, and steadily accrued more supporters and acclaim. Summer saw the release of the Leave Everywhere 7”, and in fall he issued a 12” single under his house music moniker, Les Sins. Always a prolific creator, Chaz used the sparse downtime between tours to prepare and record his sophomore album. Having spent the year listening to film composers like Françoise de Roubaix and Ennio Morricone, Chaz returned to his parents’ home in Columbia, the birthplace of many Toro tracks of yore, to bring his new ideas to fruition. The result of these sessions is Underneath the Pine, a deeply personal album that sees him putting down the samples and electronics and relying completely on live instrumentation. Underneath the Pine is a record evocative of R. Stevie Moore’s homespun ruminations, David Axelrod’s sonic scope, the spacey disco of Mandre, and the pervasive funk of his first record. It’s a new phase for an artist whose diverse curiosities make his music difficult to classify.
BRAIDS
BRAIDS was formed by four best friends in their last year of High School in Calgary, Alberta. Convincing one another to skip university, BRAIDS stayed in the garage all year and practiced obsessively, even while their fingers froze during the cold prairie winters. Then, at only 18 years old, they took the bold step of moving across the country together to Montreal, where they began crafting their self recorded/self produced debut album Native Speaker.
ADVENTURE
Adventure is 24 year-old North Carolina native and recent Baltimore transplant Benny Boeldt. His ultra-melodic synth compositions pull from his earliest exposure to the 8-bit soundtracks of the Sega Genesis video game catalog. But it's not just retro video game music. Mix in the kitschy Moogy sound of Hot Butter's "Popcorn", the saturated disco-theatrics of late seventies electro-pop acts like Sparks and Yellow Magic Orchestra, and a penchant for Eastern European diminished scales and you've come pretty close to Adventure's accelerated baroque sound.
