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.
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.
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>