-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
ARTIST..: Toro Y Moi
ALBUM...: June 2009
GENRE...: Indie
STYLE...: Indie Pop, Chillwave, Slacker Rock, Folk Rock, Lo-Fi, Pop Rock, Synth-Pop
YEAR....: 2012
LABEL...: Carpark
COUNTRY.: Oakland, CA, USA
BORN....: 7 November 1986, Columbia, SC, USA
ENCODER.: FLAC 1.3.1 -8 -V
BITRATE.: 798 kbps avg
QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / 2 channels
SOURCE..: CD
TRACKS..: 10
SIZE....: 166.92 MB
URL..: https://toroymoi.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toro_y_Moi
https://toroymoi.blogspot.com
https://www.facebook.com/toroymoi
- TRACKLIST
1 Best Around 1:29
2 Take The L To Leave 2:22
3 Girl Problems 2:43
4 Dead Pontoon 2:24
5 Ektelon 3:19
6 Drive South 3:38
7 Sad Sams 2:55
8 Talamak (First Version) 3:46
9 Warm Frames 2:40
10 New Loved Ones 3:39
Total Playtime: 28:55
Though it's but a collection of outtakes and rarities, June 2009 plays like
much more than just that, making for a fitting precursor to Causers' light,
breezy textures and the grooving forest-lounge of this year's Underneath the
Pine.
*
Chaz Bundick began making recordings under the name Toro y Moi in 2001, but
he only began to make some noise in 2009 when a flood of releases sparked a
lot of interest in the chilly pop sounds he was creating. That year he put
out two singles (including the much-hyped -- for good reason -- "Blessa"), an
EP, a self-released full-length album (My Touch), and a tour-only collection
of songs called June 2009. This June 2009 is a revamped version of that
collection; nine of the ten songs here appeared on the original CD-R. Anyone
who discovered Toro y Moi after 2009 may be surprised at how direct and indie
rock-derived a big chunk of the album is, as many of the songs are
guitar-based gems that show the influence of Pavement or My Bloody Valentine.
There is plenty of reverb and the fidelity is reassuringly low, so it's not a
million miles away from later Toro records. A few songs sound like chillwave
warmups for Causers of This, the early, looser version of "Talamak" in
particular. There's even a track ("Drive South") that nods to the squiggly
electro-funk of 2011's Freaking Out EP. There may not be anything
particularly revelatory about June 2009, but it's a nice batch of tunes and
anyone who's new to Bundick's work will appreciate this glimpse into the
early days.
*
Chaz Bundick spent 2011 enduring a barrage of subliminal criticism, but other
than that, he had a pretty good year. It just wasn't one that gave him much
incentive to get retrospective: Whenever his excellent sophomore LP
Underneath the Pine and the subsequent Freaking Out EP were deemed
"progressions," it felt like backhanded praise for the artistic distance he
was creating from Causers of This, an album that's become weirdly underrated
as its chillaxed aesthetic is seemingly blamed for everything from the death
of indie rock to LeBron James' laissez-faire attitude in crunch time. So, at
the very least, you have to admire the audacity of Bundick dipping into his
personal stash for June 2009, a collection of singles written around the same
time as Causers of This.
While they're not the proverbial naked baby pictures, June 2009 doesn't
dispute the idea of Bundick as someone who ultimately profited from our
collective deadbeat summer at the outset. You sense that Bundick had a clear
idea of the kind of songs he wanted to write, but there's also the enormous
strides he was yet to make as a producer, as an arranger, as a full-blown
artist. It's not too hard to view the propulsive, clean melodic lines of
"Dead Pontoon" (his strongest early single) as a preview for Underneath the
Pine rid of that record's newfound Eurocentric influences. But early on,
Bundick used his immediate surroundings as topical inspiration for mundane
songs: vehicles, geographic proper names, "Girl Problems". Considering the
self-consciousness that's crept into his artistic process, it's impossible to
imagine him ever being in a mindset where he'd write something like
"Ektelon", an incredibly literal recollection of a river tubing expedition.
As expected, Ariel Pink is namedropped as the major influence, but when
Bundick fails to hit some hilariously amateur falsetto notes on "Best Around"
or "Take the L to Leave", it's more reminiscent of Rivers Cuomo's strangely
fearless Alone tapes-- this isn't the work of a visionary weirdo but rather a
guy who sees benefits in the mere archival and procedural aspects of
creation. The immediacy and economy of Bundick's songwriting extended to his
recording at the time as well. The songs are very short and structurally
unfussy, while production values are basically nil, relying on the kinds of
tricks familiar to anyone fucking around with their first four-track:
doubling vocals in octaves, letting the entire mix submerge under the bass,
the R&B and pop of one's youth channeled through Casio presets.
With that in mind, June 2009 almost has to be chronologically sequenced in
light of just how jarring "Sad Sams" turns out to be. Up to that point, it's
mostly hummable, punchy guitar music with some bubble-funk affectations,
pleasant if not particularly unique amongst the scores of lo-fi artists doing
the same thing. The roller-rink pop of "Drive South" hints at Bundick
starting to get a grasp for rhythm and texture but "Sad Sams" sounds like the
first clean break-- the drum machines are still crudely recorded and might be
overcompensating in terms of volume, but you can hear in the slick harmonies
and wobbly arrangement that it's where Toro Y Moi really started to take
shape. Immediately thereafter, "Talamak" offers a means of direct comparison:
Both the "First Version" and the one that appeared on Causers of This were
subject to Dilla-esque warping and tape degradation, but the latter showed
evidence of Bundick's incredible progress as a sound crafter. The pops and
hisses sounded very intentional and smartly deployed, whereas here, "Talamak"
just sounds like it was dubbed to an old cassette.
Still, there's no getting around the fact that June 2009 acquires most of its
value, if not all of it, in context with Causers of This and Underneath the
Pine. But it allows you to think "big picture" not only about Bundick, but
the role of production and atmosphere in general. The most common criticism
of Toro Y Moi is that it's more "vibes" than "songs," which assumes a false
binary. Don't get me wrong, I love me a raw and dead-sober Steve Albini
production, but it would completely negate the effect of "Blessa", where
Bundick's woozy, almost drunken ambience coincided with that song's
bittersweet resignation-- you could easily envision someone in a humid South
Carolina apartment, beer in hand, shirt untucked, at the end of a long day in
the office. By the same token, I wouldn't want to hear a Toro Y Moi remix of
a Bill Callahan song. The bustling anti-chillwave cottage industry could
certainly look at June 2009 as a "gotcha" moment for Bundick-- as far as
typical "songwriting" metrics go, it's pretty thin. But I say that's
bullshit, and June 2009 in its own way makes an even better case for Toro Y
Moi as a band that may have initially benefited from good timing, but also
has the ambition and learning curve to keep improving on an already
impressive catalog.
*
Of all the artists saddled with the chillwave genre tag, none have been more
prolific or adventurous than Toro Y Moi's Chaz Bundick. On last year's
sophomore album, Underneath The Pine, he touched on yearning, Todd
Rundgren-style soft-rock ("How I Know") and vintage synth-disco ("New Beat").
Then he followed it up with the wild Freaking Out EP, a five-track set which
found him chopping up original material with Hype Machine dance-remix
aesthetics. The broad influences of his 2010 debut, Causers Of This, included
J. Dilla and the Balearic pop championed by Sweden's Service Records. Moments
of Causers, however, did contain the signature slow-motion strobing of
chillwave's ur-text, Washed Out's "Feel It All Around," and following that
thread leads back to the embryonic June 2009.
Before signing to Carpark, Bundick casually self-released a pair of
unofficial full-lengths: the high-energy dance collection My Touch, and the
tour CD-R June 2009, which sees its mainstream release as a vinyl singles box
(and standard CD/digital editions). The collection is suited for the medium:
Its warped, lo-fi pop sounds genuinely sun-melted, or at least subject to a
giggly few minutes in Ariel Pink's microwave. The original June 2009 (or at
least the version floating around the Internet) was 16 tracks, including the
first appearances of Causers tracks "Blessa" and "Causers of This"-which are
left off the reissue-as well as an early take on "Talamak." The latter track
appears here as electronic pop gone blurry, its drum programming barely
visible through the fidelity fog.
It's as useful as a time capsule as an album: The songs simultaneously
document Bundick's emerging, eclectic songwriting sensibilities and his
almost-there engineering ambitions. The slimmed-down set focuses largely on
his unexplored guitar side: On "Take The L To Leave" and "Girl Problems," he
offers Polaroid takes on Sly And The Family Stone, while the grittier "Dead
Pontoon" could be a Cloud Nothings demo. "New Loved Ones" pairs his doubled
vocals with an acoustic guitar and a touch of reverb. The more sensitive
material fares better than the gloomy industrial anthem "Sad Sams," which
finds Bundick singing "No one will die" under the weight of Ian Curtis'
ghost; the equally bleak, bass-driven "Drive South" could stand to get to the
beach already. But when he sings, "Call me soon/I don't have anything to do"
on "Best Around," the slacker vibes are just a front. What June 2009 captures
best is a craft-focused artist willing to try anything once.
-=- SHGZ -=-
-=-=-==-=-=-
Shoegaze
is a genre of alternative rock that
originated in the late 80s. The genre is very
difficult to define, and it is even more difficult to evaluate music
within it. Generally, the genre is characterized by its
shimmering vocals, reverberating guitars, and
textural distortion that create
a tranquil, opaque
feeling.
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