My Neighbour Toro

14 February 2013 | 9:44 am | Cyclone Wehner

“I just wanted to do electronic R&B this album so, yeah, I was listening to a lot of electronic music, hip hop music...”

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Today back in the US, Bundwick sounds tired, yet quietly satisfied. “It's gone well,” Bundick says.“We're in the States now with the US tour. But, yeah, both have gone really well.” His Australian label, Mistletone Records, has ceaselessly – and valiantly – chased him for interview time while he was off gigging in Europe. Next month he'll return to Australia to play, among other dates, the Adelaide Festival and Golden Plains. “It's gonna be a full band,” Bundick assures. “It's gonna a good live show.” Bundick was last here for the St Jerome's Laneway Festival 2012 with his homeboy Washed Out (AKA Ernest Greene). They both performed live – and DJed in a Topshop-sponsored bar. “I loved it!,” Bundick recalls fondly. “Australians just love to dance – [they] appreciate dance music on a whole other level.”

In fact, Bundick has a new base. He's relocated from his native Columbia, South Carolina to Berkeley, on the shore of San Francisco Bay. Bundick wanted to be with his girlfriend, he reveals bashfully. “Also, it's just nice to get out of your hometown after a while. Berkeley's just an awesome area, too.” Still, the lyrics on Anything... allude to homesickness.

Bundick was born to a Filipina mother and African-American father – they'd left New York for the South to raise a family. Bundick came up with Greene, the high schoolers meeting at a party. They'd eventually begin collaborating on music and “hanging out”. However, Bundick, into punk, initially acquired a profile fronting the indie group The Heist And The Accomplice. He also studied graphic design at the University of South Carolina, maintaining a stake in art and photography to this day (check his album sleeves). His musical sensibilities ever-expanding, Bundick ultimately felt confined by indie band-dom and so experimented with laptop production. Airing lo-fi tracks online, he found his music tagged 'chillwave' – as was Greene's. The term, originating in the blogosphere, would soon be attached to any 'new' electronica evoking '80s synth-pop, shoegaze and ambient or Balearic house. Regardless, Bundick signed to the US independent Carpark Records, delivering a well received debut, Causers Of This, home to the popular Blessa, at the start of 2010. A year on, he followed with Underneath The Pine. Bundick has now issued three albums and Greene just one (his Within And Without appeared on Sub Pop in 2011).

Anything... represents another progression for Bundick, mixing up glitch-hop, electro-funk and jazzy deep house. “I feel good,” he says of his evolution. “I mean, there's so many more things I wanna try to do, so I try to outdo myself every time. It's all good.” A Pitchfork reviewer detected the influence of Flying Lotus and J Dilla on Toro Y Moi as early as Causers... And The Neptunes comparisons aren't far off the mark for Bundick, whose vocals are uncannily like Pharrell Williams' on the lead single So Many Details. “I just wanted to do electronic R&B this album so, yeah, I was listening to a lot of electronic music, hip hop music...” Curiously, Bundick holds that his Californian surrounds made no impact on the LP, although they may in future. “California has an awesome music scene for hip hop and psychedelic rock and even dance music,” he acknowledges.

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Since 2010 Bundick has been moving on from chillwave, but he's still routinely branded as such in the media. The problem is that hipsters now scoff at the ostensibly contrived genre. If he's irritated by the association, Bundick doesn't let on. “I'm not really sick of it at all,” he says easily. “I've accepted it – like what people call it, so... All I can do is just keep progressing. But, if people wanna keep calling it whatever, that's fine (laughs). It's just like it's something that helps people describe it.” 

In the meantime, chillwave has, ironically, crept into urban music, Canadian rapper Drake and his beatmakers (led by Noah “40” Shebib) pioneering illwave. Bundick's touch is also detectable in the R&B of Toronto's TheWeeknd and Odd Future's Frank Ocean. Tyler, The Creator, peculiarly ambivalent about hip hop, has referenced Bundick as well as Beach House. “That's what I'm influenced by,” he told The Guardian in 2011. “[That's why] the music is a mixture of pretty chords, fuckin' hardcore drums and basslines, and really nice strings.” In turn, Bundick digs these avant urban players. “I'm a big fan of what they're doing. I think the sounds that they're using are definitely changing the direction of pop music. It's a pretty cool thing, 'cause it's just a little bit more experimental and it sort of challenges listeners. It's a good thing to do.”

Bundick has done surprisingly few remixes (his last notable one was for Cut Copy). Nevertheless, he did rework Tyler's French! (featuring Hodgy Beats) off Bastard, his take somewhere between dubstep and Houston's chopped & screwed. More importantly, Bundick teamed with Tyler to cut 2012's Hey You – the demo of which he confirms was “leaked”. “I don't know how it got out there.” Bundick would love to again connect with Odd Future's enfant terrible. And he's actively pursuing hip hop production. “That's one thing I always hope to do – do that kind of stuff – so hopefully people will seek me out.”

EDM has exploded into the US mainstream, with Skrillex-y dubstep currently being superseded by a dance reboot of trap. Bundick, surely happily on EDM's margins, is bemused. “I feel like mainstream listeners in America are always the last ones to catch onto a trend,” he offers, contrasting the US to not only Europe, but also to Australia. “It's cool that it's finally getting popular, but it's so far behind here... Electronic music's been in pop music in Europe for so long already. It's just interesting to see how long it took to be in hip hop over here, you know?”

Bundick has ventured into club music. He introduced a French house-inspired side-project, Les Sins, back in 2010 with the 12 inch Lina. Bundick recently relaunched it with Fetch/Taken via old ally Dan Snaith's Jiaolong imprint, the Canadian himself veering away from the IDM Caribou with his dancier Daphni guise. Bundick plans to release more Les Sins fare, but presently he's “just trying to work on improving those production skills and then trying to make things sound right.” He sighs, “It's definitely a challenge just to make a straight electronic song.” Apparently, Bundick hasn't abandoned indie-rock, either – even if, besides his long having had a Toro Y Moi band, there's little sign of it in his catalogue. “I still listen to that more than dance music and more than new R&B – that's my favourite stuff,” he insists. Bundick rattles off some of his favourite bands: Tame Impala, Real Estate and Broken Social Scene. “I could go on,” he teases. Music really is cyclical in Bundick's world. “I think maybe one day I'll start going back to that direction.”

TAKE A CHILL PILL

Bundick made himself known in 2010 and 2011 with the releases of Causers Of This and Underneath The Pine, respectively. This period saw the birth of what the media came to turn as the “chillwave” movement. Just like any flash-in-the-pan genre classification, many have found the label derivative, but it stands to reason that Bundick would find himself identifying with people who were in the midst of creating the same range of music that he was. We put together a quick runthrough of chillwave's movers and shakers.

WASHED OUT

Where Bundick has brought in a more soul and r'n'b-based edge to his music, Greene has relished lush atmospherics and sounds recalling early Moby and Portishead. His debut album, Within And Without, is a great addition to the genre. His track Feel It All Around also features on the intro to the cult TV series Portlandia.

NEON INDIAN

Probably the most high-profile example of what people were talking about when they say chillwave, Neon Indian had been kicking around for a few years before 2010. 2009's Psychic Chasms really kicked off the whole movement with its abstract and psychedelic treatment of synth pop.

MEMORY TAPES

In 2009, Dayve Hawk combined his Memory Casette and Weird Tapes monikers in order to bring the various strings of his bedroom production together. In true form, Seek Magic covered various styles of production and including a few covers and remixes, with a ridiculously long instrumental piece in Treeship.

COM TRUISE

Seth Haley aka Com Truise has gained a massive cult following.Withtwo albums in  with Galactic Melt and In Decay, Haley is responsible for a huge number of remixes, from the others on this list to the likes of Maroon 5 and Foster The People. His incredibly glitchy yet dancey work elbows old-school techno very slightly, with a more minimalist bent and an attitude to catchy beats.

Toro Y Moi will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 7 March - The Standard, Surry Hills NSW
Friday 8 March - Adelaide Festival, Adelaide SA
Saturday 9 March - Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC
Sunday 10 March - Golden Plains Festival, Meredith VIC