Anything in Return
Serving as a synopsis of everywhere he's taken Toro Y Moi to date, Chaz Bundick's third full-length is also the longest and loudest of his releases. Here's silky R&B, roller-rink pop, bubblegum funk, and tasteful chillout music, all unified by a voice that's grown more confident with time.
Evolving from the relaxed trance/shoegaze hybrids of his early chillwave work, 2011’s Underneath The Pine—Chaz Bundick’s second album under the Toro Y Moi moniker—pulsed with energetic funk jams that, at times, seemed like a modern re-imagination of disco. With Bundick stating that follow-up Anything In Return was…
At its best where it showcases pop music rather than making fun of it, Anything In Return possesses its own oddball charm.
Toro y Moi’s Chaz Bundick isn’t the kind of guy who likes to repeat himself from release to release.
The third LP from Chaz Bundick sees the producer’s lush, pop-oriented blend of house and hip-hop take a bold stride towards the mainstream, without sacrificing the distinctive qualities of Causers of This and Underneath the Pine. The South Carolinian has largely shaken off the chillwave tag – if it was ever of any use – in honing a sound that owes as much to the shuffling, disjointed beats of Flying Lotus as it does to radio-friendly soul and RnB.
Of all the artists to emerge from the chillwave craze, Toro y Moi (aka Chaz Bundick) has arguably been the most successful at transcending the confines of the genre and carving out his own path.
Anything in Return is a self-assured, adult album. Full of determined beats, it's worlds away from our first introduction to Toro Y Moi, 2010's chillwave hallmark-heavy Causers of This, and a quantifiably large step up from early works comp June 2009.
ClashMusic: Read an album review of Toro Y Moi's Anything In Return album. It is the producer Chaz Bundick's third album, reviewed in Issue 81 of Clash Magazine.
Mike Unger reviews Toro Y Moi's new Album 'Anything In Return, out Now on Carpark Records
Chaz Bundick, aka Toro Y Moi, returns to his disco-party mode on this beautifully inventive and complex album, writes <strong>Maddy Costa</strong>