Albums
Three years after his debut, Chaz Bundick’s made the album he’s been threatening to. The pop sheen glimpsed on ‘Causers...’ and ‘Underneath The Pine’, has been polished until it glitters, while the r’n’b and house quotient is ramped up, too.
Bundick has moved from South Carolina to the Bay Area, and there’s a Cali-style blunted funk flavour to ‘Day One’ and ‘High Living’, while ‘So Many Details’ is a lovely, mournful, 8-bit lurch with distorted kicks and Bundick’s sweet, distinctive voice at the fore. The tempos are not all stoned and summery.
Bundick’s French house obsession is clear on ‘Never Matter’, with its 80s AOR synth power chords and shimmery 4/4 tempo. ‘Harm In Change’, along with ‘Say That’, plays with euphoric house tropes, but the highlight is ‘Grown Up Calls’, with its complex J Dilla-style beats. Soulful, grown-up, dancey synth pop is hard to do well, but Toro Y Moi nails it.
