Toro Y Moi

Chaz Bundick was not immune to the trends of maximum chill and minimum fidelity that swept through electronic pop in late 2009. But unlike peers such as Neon Indian and Memory Tapes, Bundick’s work as Toro Y Moi sounds markedly less concerned with revisiting the sounds trapped in old cassettes and more inclined to see how far that tape within will stretch. On this year’s Underneath The Pine, that extends to eschewing samples entirely, instead using all-organic instrumentation to reconfigure the mood music of yesterday—Air-esque exotica, jazzy space-rock, and ambient disco, to name a few—into the supremely chill soundtrack for our not-so-chill times.

Updated 08/30/2011