Toro Y Moi - Sandhills - 12-INCH SINGLE [12 inch Vinyl Single]

Venice - Spin Art [COMPACT DISCS] date 08/24/1999

Following the ever-emotive Boo Boo, Toro y Moi's new album Outer Peace is a time capsule that captures our relationship to contemporary culture into one comprehensive, sonic package. As both a producer and designer, Chaz Bear utilizes abstract sound pairings with recognizable samples for his most pop influenced record to date, including features from ABRA, WET, and Instupendo. This is no departure from his funk and disco roots, which can be heard on InchOrdinary Pleasure,Inch later fusing into variations of house with tracks like InchFreelanceInch and InchLaws of the Universe.Inch Smooth interludes melt into fast paced beats, paralleling the feeling of driving through the Bay Area, where Bear spent most of his time writing the album. Outer Peace is duality. It embodies whatever form you choose to inhabit in the moment. Listen and let your imagination become the universe.

Hole Erth, Chaz Bear's eighth full-length studio record as Toro y Moi, is the genre shapeshifter's most unexpected and bold move to date, with Bear diving headlong into rap-rock, Soundcloud rap and Y2K emo. The album blitzes anthemic pop-punk next to autotuned, melancholic rap - two genres that inform one another now more than ever before - and packs in the most features ever on a Toro y Moi album. A sense of nostalgia sneaks it's way into almost every Toro y Moi , but angst is an emotion that Bear has never intentionally explored the way he does here. Tracks like InchTuesday' channel a specific, yet forever-relatable sense of adolescent unease. A distorted guitar riff leads into a repeating chorus that conjures misunderstood teenagers singing aloud, maybe too loud, while riding bikes through American suburbs. This foreboding can also be heard on InchHOV, Inch though not without poking some fun with lines like InchRomance is so cold / My advice? To bring a coat.InchBear has the energy, but is acutely aware that his energy isn't forever. At a time when the internet is blending multiple genres into one at an increasingly rapid pace, Bear accomplishes the rare feat of keeping up with the contemporary alternative listener. Constantly changing, evolving and experimenting is the heart of Toro y Moi, and on Hole Erth Bear challenges but also reclaims himself, embracing the myriad sounds and eras that formed him, while crashing new worlds together.