Chazwick Bradley Bundick is back with his solo project Toro Y Moi’s fifth album, Boo Boo. But is the track worthy of this pet name?
Or is it more of a mistake?
Taking a bilingual approach to naming the project, (Toro and Y being Spanish and Moi being French) ending up as Bull and Me, Toro Y Moi (or just Chazwick) is one of the key influencers of Chillwave alongside Washed Out. Despite having claimed to have moved away from the movement in later albums, the influences can still be heard across Bundick’s music, be it his self-titled projects or Toro Y Moi, but if he’s moved away from it, has his music matured in it’s own right?
The opening track, Mirage manages to exemplify what Toro Y Moi is/was all about – chillwave. As one of the pioneers of the movement, Bundick shows the world how it should be done. Dreamy, borderline eerie synths trawl their way across the opening track, interspersed with some lazy, flowing vocals and higher pitches from the synth shoot their way across the track which leads its way into No Show without missing a beat.
Boo Boo is the fifth studio album by Toro y Moi
On the note of beats, No Show takes a slower, more bass and beat lead vibe than the opening track with a heavier feature from Chazwick’s vocals. It’s certainly not what you’d call a dancefloor filler, but it’s undeniably something you want to move about to, maybe not jump around, but a slow, groovy track such as this has its place too. At the halfway point, Windows manages this genre jump as well. The song features a heavy use of autotune that T-Pain would be proud of but still interweaved with the weird and wonderful synth line we expect from Toro Y Moi, it’s the style of song that more clubs should try leading out with as 3am approaches and the lights get turned up.
In what could be seen as a more ‘mainstream’ track, Mona Lisa finds its voice. Being led by more natural vocals than the opening pair of tracks, the track leans far more towards synthpop, with FX-loaded guitars and an effervescent, more upbeat drum and bass backing throughout. It’s certainly more in the realms of pop. As the mood darkens towards the end of the song, we are led, once again, gaplessly, into Pavement. A darker, more ‘spacey’ throwback to some of Toro Y Moi’s earlier work, with minimal vocals and a LOT of synth effects.
The album is not without its weaker moments however, Embarcadero is convoluted at best, a confused mash-up of elevator moosack and a discopop backing track at worst, it feels more like a sound effect trial board than an attempt at a song. Unfortunately the lead single from the album, Girl Like You falls into a similar pit. The song feels jumbled, as though to compensate for a more ‘normal’ vocal set that could be easily found in the top 40, Bundick has needed to throw as much synth over his backing beat to prove it’s still him and his signature sound behind the pop gauze.
This, unfortunately isn’t where the confusion ends. Rapidly, or at least as fast as an attempted dreamscape of an album can move, You And I and Labyrinth use Girl Like You as a springboard to leap straight away from Chillwave and straight into Synthpop, but without managing to shake it off completely. The tracks aren’t bad, that much can be said, especially with a gorgeous guitar breakdown towards the end, Labyrinth is a great track, the issue is that from the opening half of the album, the later tracks feel too jarring a transition from the ambient dreamscape.
Don’t Try feels a lot like it’s taking influence from one of the masters of electronic music, Massive Attack, or at least as though Bundick is trying to replicate them alone, and at least pulling off some of the instrumentals if not the vocals. That aside, it’s comfortably my favourite track on the album, and deserves attention for bridging the genre gap across the album far more deftly than where others try and fail on the album.
As the seven minute marathon of W.IW.W.T.W leads us out of the album in a hazy, almost ambient way, we have time to reflect. Overall the album is not bad, however it IS quite heavily let down by massive leaps from style to style making for a disjointed, fairly clunky album. This is even more of a jolt when the album is supposed to be a poppy chillout session. Again though, the album is not bad, it is well engineered, if not structured well, and for fans of ambient, chillwave or even minimal house, I’d recommend giving it a go.
Author: Steve, Southgate store
