Zach and Christian's last Child Bite show 2-26 - Magic Stick - the band looks back, then looks forward to a summer with living, breathing organs (LP)

(farewell show - 2/26 - Magic Stick - w/Terrible Twos, Marco Polio & The New Vaccines)

Child Bite -
words--milo

“I remember playing a show at the Magic Stick where I turned around on stage only to be pummeled by a Sean Clancy.”

Christian Doble (pictured below) anecdotally interrupts his own answer to the question of how the band Child Bite changed, from his perspective, since his joining…as February 26th will be his, and original member Zach Norton’s (pictured above)…final show with the band.

“(Clancy) had just taken a backwards leap from the drums. I remember trying getting up only to be side-swiped by someone else’s guitar. My saxophone had been smashed and was unplayable. When I was young, I went to a Kenny G concert and I remember thinking it was cool that he could play a note for such an extended amount of time. Why did I think that was cool?? That’s for dumb people! I would love to see that dude try and play in Child Bite and possibly get smashed.”

...Possibly?

Now, Doble, a longtime acquaintance of founding member Shawn Knight (pictured below), has always played the greaseman type role for Child Bite…I believe the word “auxiliary” was dropped during an interview on the eve of his official “joining” in 2007. So, when I ask him, essentially, to detail the footprint he left, he humbly asks for my own input…

“Well,” I started to ramble out, “I would say that early-early Child Bite, (a three piece with Knight on keyboard/guitar, Norton on bass and Daniel Sperry on drums), could sometimes feel like an epileptic karate chop from a glowing-green-eyed alien who danced like James Brown – but, uh, your entry (and, I would say, along with Sean Clancy), somehow seemed to add a strut to its weirdness – sorta how you’d see this thing in the eyes of naïve KISS fans who were enjoying the combination of horror and heroics – that same energy, only it now had more synchronicity and insanity with the weirdness being ever thus more weird because of you (two), but, with the ever so subtle surge, now, of a slight pop-thing, and…ya know, crazy metal but…(as Doble said), ‘thicker’, that covers it for me, perhaps even more rousing in its weird-pop dynamism.”

Hmm…

“I think healthy doses of both happy and creepy are important to Child Bite,” said singer/guitarist Shawn Knight, adding, charmingly esoteric, that things simply just got more “more-r…” from 08 into 09, as, “the make-up has been an ever-growing/shrinking core with several recurring satellites coming in and out of play.”

“It’s tough to say what I’ll miss most,” said Norton, a longtime collaborator with Sperry; the pair was conscripted by Knight years ago to make noise in a basement. “I really loved being in that band. I think that’s going to be the hardest part – just not being part of it; I’m going to miss all those dudes personally too.”

He got anecdotal himself: “There was a big change when I went from playing bass to guitar. There’s much more responsibility on bass. On guitar, I got to play around more.” (Indeed, a new fire burned in his eyes at those shows – using a wireless signal that allowed him to explore, to great lengths, all venues.) “I could literally drop my guitar, and chase down that 6 ft inflatable Corona bottle, the soundman was trying to get off stage. You know? And in the musical sense, I felt a bit more free to push myself and experiment. So…I bought a wah pedal.”

Clancy and Sperry, the rhythm section, (who, Clancy noted previously, really bonded as a beat unit over the shows leading up to 08’s Fantastic Gusts of Blood,) both considered this line-up shift a natural process. Indeed, as Clancy indicates the “insane personal sacrifices one has to make to be in a full band,” thus, forks in the road come up and now Norton and Doble move on to, respectively, a new job (and perhaps new musical collaborations) in Seattle for Norton, and the development of a new band (FAWN) and expansion of a current (Copper Thieves) for Doble.


It’s tough, Clancy noted, “especially when the band, like Child Bite, pushes itself as hard as we do. Mentally, physically and financially, it’s an intense set of choices. And for us it’s a wicked-amicable parting; I love Zach and Christian and what we’ve accomplished with them.”

“Zach and I have been playing music together since high school,” said Sperry, “so we’ve developed our playing together and along the way into something of a ‘brothers’ relationship. Christian, though his relationship with the band has been more on/off, will be missed too. They both are great and unique players.”

“These are two unbelievably talented and mega-creative powerhouse-humans,” Clancy continued, inferring, essentially, that the next move is not to, as the word rings coldly, ‘replace’ them, but rather to just adapt into whatever form fits them best for the road ahead. “Child Bite won’t be the same, not for better or for worse, just different. Just…something else.”

For now, the band will survive as a three piece, embracing a period of loose experimentation to find the right feeling for the future – which includes, for future shows, guitar contributions from Brett Siler (of Stationary Odyssey) and, beyond that, as Sperry sits out a forthcoming tour, they’ll add in drummers Brandon Sczomack (Word Play) and Brandon Moss (Wildcatting/Bars of Gold).

“Soon after (the ‘spring tour’ with Zoos of Berlin, ending April 10), we’ll have the new album out,” said Knight. “…Not sure as of now who will be in the band at that point, so that’s kind of
exciting. –New blood!”

Listen: Child Bite - "Banana Gorgon"

Child Bite - "I Like Friends"

It was a big year for the often fuzzy-faced quintet and their bent-broken-ballet of roar-pop; they embarked on a “beard tour” across the continent and up through the Adirondacks to compete in the World Beard and Mustache tour, “almost hit(ting) a moose,” Norton noted. “And, our introduction into hardcore-beard-culture was great, too. The Beard Team USA Nationals are this June in Oregon, so I’m already growing for that.”

They released a series of 7”s (three, total, with as many different bands: This Moment In Black History/Big Bear/DDMMYYYY—following up with tour-partnerships with each.)

Later in the spring, they’ll release the fruits of recorded labors, including a spat of 12-hour-days spent with engineer J. Robbins, putting together their new LP, The Living Breathing Organ Summer. “I think it feels more mature, yet stranger than Gusts,” said Knight. “I think we each took our individual directions from Gusts and kept going further down our unique paths, which I think is key to it being our most unique record.”

This is their first time recording in Detroit (as they’d dipped lower in the rustbelt into Indiana for past records), first with Robbins for tracking then with Chris Koltay for mixing. “It sounds huge, gnarly and full of manic life,” said Clancy. “We don’t really have concepts for things from the get-go,” he adds when I try to get flowery and ask about themes or processes, etc… “We usually just try to keep it a natural culmination of what happens when us—as distinct individuals—get into a room and try to argue to a common representation of all of us as a unit…which,” he opens up, “is…probably why what we do doesn’t come out as a passive listening experience. It’s the colorful and energetic aftermath of the creative ego-battle we rage against each other for the good (and bad) of this collective-we-dub: Child Bite.”

“(This) was the first time I really filled songs with horn lines,” said Doble. “Originally I was only brought in to record in the studio so I wanted to create parts that didn’t need to be present in the live show.” Doble’s music is at least somewhere on every Child Bite release; before, songs were often brought to Doble in their almost-finished form. He recalls a telling tale of a (06) Gold Thriller recording, while recording his parts “at home” in Detroit, with them in Indiana: “I remember writing a part where I sang and played the sax part in tandem, having been recently inspired by Ennio Morricone.” For “Don’t Do What Your Body Tells You To,” Doble said, “the boys took my parts and mistakenly shifted them into a wrong spot in the song. Everyone ended up liking it better that way. I knew I was in for quite a ride with this band. Child Bite taught me to re-think the meaning of pop music.”

Norton considered it a “terrible terrible shame to leave the band at this time, because I love” the new songs, “…I love the record. Definitely our best work.”

He added, “This was by far the most serious band I’ve ever been in…we were really involved in the decision making process. We argued for months about what to call Fantastic Gusts of Blood.
We finally put it to a vote, which we ended up doing a lot.” (Including, fyi, the naming of the band – which even involved a run-off).

“I guess that’s the glorious thing about the band,” said Norton. “That we found each other when we did and our paths ran parallel for the time that they did.”

Both of the departing biters are driven and dynamic enough that they could lead their own bands – yet they both offered paralleling reverences for de-facto band “leader” Knight, using words like, “a force,” “an almost robotic-determination, a real awe-inspiring work ethic,” and “tough to keep up with…”

Knight, for his part, continues utilizing his skill in graphic design for the band’s benefit – in show posters and album covers. While he’d banded around Detroit through the early 00’s, this was always his baby. Sperry’s rich musical experience includes drumming for experimental orchestral rock trio El Boxeo, with whom he nurtured his bond with Norton, no doubt making this a hard split for the brothers. Clancy came to CB from tenures in other bands as well, most notably experimental indie-rock group Rescue. He will help to fill a big portion of the as-of-yet-untied shoes of future CB. Norton will continue in music out there in Seattle, while Doble develops Copper Thieves, and his latest, the boy-girl harmony (thus, inevitably Kiddo-recalling-aesthetic) of FAWN.

“It’s always weird when a relationship has to come to an end,” laments Knight. “We’ve been doing this for a little while now, so it’s to be expected that over time people’s lives change. No hard feelings, no regrets! I actually started the band with Zach knowing him hardly better than as-an-acquaintance, so the duration of the band was really the beginning of our friendship as well. Zach and Christian both brought their own amazing melodic and structural ideas to the band as well as their lovable personalities.”

And what of Child Bite now?

After the farewell show (2/26 – Magic Stick), they’ll experiment with a new guitarist and dueling drummers – thus will be the only momentarily Sperry-less line up for a tour with Zoos of Berlin, 3/25—4/10. After that…more touring, plus the release of their LP/CD/cassette of forthcoming LP, The Living Breathing Organ Summer, (on Joyful Noise and Forge Again—co-release).

Said-new-album has “some great new collaborators,” noted head-yowler, Knight. “…Members of the Silent Years, The Hard Lessons and Zoos of Berlin, mainly. Also, I think my voice is changing from yelling like-this for so long. It is what it is…”

Lee Marvin Computer Arm - 2/20 - Loving Touch (Ferndale)

Lee Marvin Computer Arm - a Detroit based soul-rock freak orchestra - aptly/casually described by its bassist, Zachary Weedon: "...a group where everything's turned up to '11' and it's fucking loud and it's just a barrage; it's a fucking car engine at 120 mph..."

They recorded a new single and want you to hear/get/experience - the recording! The song was done a few months back at High Bias (known laboratory of Chris Koltay) - and produced by Danny Kroha. It "comes out" 2/20 - via Detroit's Italy Records.

From the LMCA-news desk: They'll be working on a full length in about a month, with Steve Albini.

"We think this is our best record," Weedon said of the new stuff, "from recording--all the way down to the art--Jamie Easter did the cover. The recording was all done live, including vocals, just like our last single, but we didn't rush it."

Druid Perfume and Gardens open things up at the show at the Loving Touch in Ferndale.

One of their new songs can be heard at thier myspace.

Photo: Esme McClear

Interview: Cold Cave - (playing 2/24 - Pike Room - Pontiac)

Lies About Emotions – Cold Cave

DC Interview

words: Milo

Photo: Jayme Thorton

Listen: Cold Cave - "The Laurels of Erotomania"

“How strange…” This is Wesley Eisold’s own afterthought upon himself, when he says he feels good about the future.

Truth be told, I didn’t know what beautifully bleak revelation of his to lay upon you first – that the tri-synth, fuzzy-goth-fried trio, Cold Cave, that Eisold started four years ago in Philadelphia was “never intended to be a band, a live band, a functioning band,” or its existence, its recordings, its live performances are “an extension of how it feels to be alive in the present future world.” Eisold, (whose past includes stints with Boston hardcore outfit Give Up The Ghost), Dominic Fernow (notable noise maven with Prurient) and Caralee McElroy (multi-instrumentalist noted for dynamic vocal contributions to darkwavers Xiu Xiu), “is just beginning and has mostly been a live thing so far.”

Eisold is devastating in his succinctness regarding society – from its embrace of technological advances furthering our detachment, isolation and complacency, to the disconcerting and foreboding behaviors that detachment breeds like mold in the amorphous corners of the internet. But there seems so much more to him than, as quick journo-write-ups will cast, flat out using words like malcontent – his misanthropy may not be absolute, potentially eased by the experience of Cold Cave. Perhaps we’d like to simplify and wrap up this goth-pop-spurred youth growing up in the late 80’s with pages of notebook scrawls dressing a simple apathy with his cutting poetics, when really the truest summation should be that this is a passionate artist – a singer, a writer and a live performer – who wore the skinned bloody pelt of hardcore punk, started his own publishing company (Heartworm) and finally started playing an instrument (albeit a cold obeying robot-like synthesizer) for his latest, Cold Cave.

Listen: Cold Cave - "Life Magazine"

“(Cold Cave)’s a way to manifest the confusion and contradictions that occur every day,” said Eisold. “You can cry, dance, love, lust, hate, to a lot of our music. In writing songs, there is a beauty that is incomparable to anything and that is that the music gets to say what no words can.” The east coaster embraced Philly as a hidey-hole-with-cheap-rent for his synth-surged experimentations.

As 2007 became 2008, he recruited Fernow and McElroy, both already prominent artists in similarly darker realms of electronic music be it freaked noise affairs to abstruse folk and started releasing 12” and 7” recordings as Cold Cave – some of which would be collected onto the debut-full-length Love Comes Close, an impressionist-cut blurred, punchy odyssey of clattery fuzzed beats, chilly-toned melodies, banshee guitars and coaxing low-to-mid sing-speak serenades – simultaneously a huddled nocturnal escapist record on the malcontent side, and an undeniably danceable affair ready for the floor of any club’s gathered bodies – on the empathetic side.

Watch: "Love Comes Close"

On live performance: “For me there is more concentration than in past bands I've played in. I use to act out how I felt inside in hopes of attaining some catharsis. I know this is not possible. I feel an affinity for the people in the room when we play. This is new for me. Our performances tend to be more abrasive than the records. We like to think of the set as a piece as opposed to individual songs.”

On synthesizers: “Often I want the most digital plastic cheap synthetic sound because that is the world I feel. It isn't an authentic environment. Its a cheap reproduction of truth and sincerity. I want to take warmth in the cloak, by using the facade.”

More info on the band - at their new home--Matador Records
or the band's site.

2/24 - Pike Room - Hair Police / City Center / John Strucel and the Conspirators of Pleasure / and / "Deastro"

NOT the Last Cutz - but...sort of...

This is what would have run - this week - as "the last print version of Deep Cutz," ...at least for the forseeable future. But, we didn't even get that much - so it runs online - just as all the rest of the rants and local music support, will be - here, online.

~Deep Cutz~

With regrettable abruptness, I have to say – thank you all for reading this column – and my thanks to all the bands whose work I covered. We live on – online (deepcutzmusic.blogspot.com). In the meantime, my last show to cover:

The High Strung recorded and released what ended up being my favorite album of the last year – if that’s worth anything to ya – Ode to the Inverse of the Dude was short and sweet, spastic and subtle, a palpably panicky shunt into the curious epiphany of the nuanced maturity gained past the 30-year-mark – captured via energetic indie-rock, sloshing reverb and tumbling drums and dizzying yowly vocals.

Two of its members, singer/guitarist Josh Malerman and bassist Chad Stocker released “solo” albums last month, the lo-fi piano-led Phantom of the Opry from the former and Fripp-fried guitar exploration Honest to Goodness from the latter. A notably strong live group, (with drummer Derek Berk), they play the Majestic Café, 2/19 - w/ Solitary States / and / Bloodbird

Black Jake & the Carnies - 2-24 - Elbow Room; Ultrasounds - 2-18 - Lager House

It’s rare, I know, that we cover bluegrass on DC - Now, this isn’t your average barefooted jug-blown unkempt straw-chewing affair – Black Jake & the Carnies (pictured above) bring such a rich flavor to their yarn-spun ballads, a majestically heaving humming accordion, a bobbing violin waltzing and splashing through the brook, the pickin’ honk of a banjo intertwined with the golden toned strum of mandolin – and all coming from an Ypsilanti-based collective of musician. The key to their charm is the character their sound is given, not just through the barn-dance twirl of their Americana-ringing instrumentation, but their embrace of the aesthetic, from the playfulness of “Kiss Me Deadly” to the more macabre, edge-of-the-swamp feeling full-moon romps “No Diamond Ring.” “Sundry Mayhem,”…indeed – see ‘em live at the Elbow Room (Ypsi) with Jim Roll and Theodore).















And, in the space left, I’ll just say: Ultrasounds (one of whom, pictured above)– yes, another Ypsi-band, but a power-trio teasing and trouncing atmospheric-pop/rock, spacey-guitars, sonorous pianos, tumbling drums, an affirming, tight, young cast forming textured experimental rock, but with an ear for pop, playing PJs Lager House, 2/18.

Wild Beasts - 2/20 - Pike Room (Pontiac)

Wild Beasts - Leeds-set quartet turned our heads with their 07 full length Limbo Panto with its ballads of repressed sexuality and bawdy bouts and the creatures that can come out of us in the ether of the night or the freedom granted when the bedroom door closes.

“There’s a lot of angst on the first record,” bassist Tom Fleming admits, “a lot of pent-up frustration. We’re kinda small town boys and we finally got the opportunity to do this record and a lot of this was kind of unleashed all at once, it was a bit too much, maybe, to take on.”

Back to the excited hyperbole – last year, they released Two Dancers, a collection of theatrical, ornately textured, subtly-danceable pop-leaning movements, shimmering as much as shimmying, with a lot of groove but also a lot of atmosphere – it made many realize it was legitimately one of the strongest releases of 09 and soon moved some to conjure suggestions of the second coming of the Smiths, taking in their subtext’s reacting against the stuffiness of society and/or mainstream culture’s masqueraded morality.

“It’s been a surreal year,” Fleming said. “It felt like 10 years.” They finished Two Dancers, toured Europe, made their first visit to the U.S. (at SXSW in Austin), had their album well-received, made a couple music videos and are starting their latest jaunt in Brisbane, Australia.

In 05, Fleming joined Hayden Thorpe and Ben Little’s (02-started) project (with Chris Talbot) that drew on the art movement Fauvisms ideas of blending penchants for perceived wildness, abstract presentation via a still-clearly well schooled hand.

Their style, musically at least, picks up where the Smiths left off, but also feels well informed by the darkly beautiful aspects of the new-wave movement, spacey, reverberating, intricate rhythms, those burnished guitars and their coaxing hooks (so seemingly molded by the school of Will Sergeant or Jonny Greenwood). Vocally it’s always been another story, another weirder, yowly, exuberant, flamboyant story, as singer Hayden Thorpe distinguished himself (and his band) early on with his falsetto, a blasting pirouette, chalky, wispy, and instigative (or flirtatious) towards the more savage side (or youthful side) of the listener.

“On (Two Dancers), we were more prepared to take risks,” Fleming said. Songs like Two Dancers, it’s heavy vocal delivery of a stark imagery, was “deliberately dramatized. It’s putting the very everyday into a music context, it could be you, it could be someone else. It’s something bigger than you and yet it’s on a small scale. A lot of the songs are about how everything you do has an effect on somebody else whether you mean it to or not, (so) what do you do with that information, how do you live with that and how do you move forward from there? A lot of this record comes back to sexuality and coming into adulthood, trying to make sense of things.”

Indeed. U.S. writers, as attention spread and ears turned, fixate on the sexuality. “There’s only moments on (Two Dancers) where that speaks through,” Fleming said. “A lot of it is quite restrained and pent-up even. I think that does reflect on our upbringing. What’s more powerful, something let absolutely free or something that has to be kept under-wraps. I dunno. That’s open to debate.”

Fleming said they look forward to the tour, but are “sitting on a goldmine” of ideas. “We’ve got lots of stuff happening.”

More info

watch:

Oh, by the way...

A few things to note, all ye plugged-in-hipsters -

--The most obvious - The Blowout Schedule is out. Read more here or here.

--Lee Marvin Computer Arm have a new record ready (news here) and are offering it up, along with a live performance, 2/20 - at the Loving Touch in Ferndale.

--The Rogue Satellites and Carjack are playing live at the Majestic Cafe on 2/12

And, coming up next Thursday- (pictured above) Kommie Kilpatrick, a DC-favorite (and by that tag I mean the blog you're reading...not the District of Columbia--even if they're hardcore-angled punk sounds incontrovertibly nourished from the early 80's muscley insano's) - are performing in the Garden Bowl (below the Magic Stick) on 2/19 with Tyvek - Holy Shit! - and Frustrations. That is a good loud, bone rattling night of punk and drinks and debauchery and intense music.

The Endtables

The sound is abrupt and cutting, you burst in and start rolling with a scratchy guitar and burly banging drums – it’s another Drag City-curated long-lost gem/time-warp, feeling here, like the form of a smoke-filled unconventional venue (maybe a VFW hall or cleared out comic shop), dark and smoky and sweaty and beer-soaked, as we rush and slam are way through a fascinating spin of punk from an overlooked pocket of the early-80’s-hardcore era, Louisville KY?, yes, indeed – and here, with The Endtables, we find the 1979 recordings of what might be the closest cousin to veritable hardcore-outcasts-The Minutemen’s unique style of undeniably punk-flavored breakneck tempos, fast and flexed riffs and provoking vocals and singing style, only tempered by a palpable appreciation for traditional rock n roll – (the same sensibilities you’d find from UK’s Wire), but taut and tawdry, with pounding percussion, bendy-bass and sing-speak splats.

The guitars on this record have so much personality – founder/singer Steve Rigot’s Factory-glam-grime persona blended with these wild and wavy guitar roars from Alex Durig lead the way on each track, both elements arm wrestling for the biggest impact – and simultaneously combining to give these songs (the first four released on their own Tuesday records and the next two surfacing as a 7” in ’91), their defining feature of feeling so attuned to the rubbery, rousing, hard-angled punk-ified rock of Minutemen/Wire (“, sticking out from the sometimes overzealous bent of hardcore and yet also set apart from the cuter pop-ified punk of maybe a Buzzcocks or XTC. Find out what you missed.

(You may be able to dig some mp3's here)

Anthony Retka - Empire - 2/20 - Anton Art Center

Anthony Retka is known as the rich, autumanl male vocal (and guitarist) of indie-tinged folk pop quartet Tone & Niche. A true singer/songwriter - he never stops writing. Which meant that he'd put out a solo record in 2005 - as well as start up a new band (Mourning Voices) about a year ago.

While MV and T&N have kept him busy, he's finally found some time to collect and release a batch of his own again - thus, Empire is Retka's first true solo record since 05. This is a more personal record for him, first person narratives, ponderous and reflective, blunt and upfront - and stripped to his voice (one of the more poignant vocalists in Detroit) and his guitar.

He'll release the album along with a performance in Mt. Clemens, 2/20, at the Anton Art Center.

Take a listen here

A Sunny Day In Glasgow

This Philly dream-pop trio(/collective) have released a new EP based around "Nitetime Rainbows" - a track from last year's odyssey-like ethereal fuzz-rock excursion Ashes Grammar - provided here is the more condense and poppier flipside-feeling "Daytime Rainbows," blended in with newer flavores for the ASDIG aesthetic, with looped accoustic guitars and a more golden sunny jangly thing ("So Bloody, So Tight") over their usual hushed and hallow-feeling harmony haze. "Piano Lessons" moves them away from their typically shoegaze-interpretted sound and more into a synth-centered sound, dark, 8-bit bass, a blippy churning thing dashed with pianos and a ghostly serenade. This EP features a re-editing of the title track by Benoit Pioulard as well as remixes from The Buddy System and Ezekiel Honig.

More info at ASDIG's site.

Reviews: Gil Scott-Heron / Toro Y Moi

Rough Trade

More info












Initially it’s perplexing for an artist so revered in his realm that he is considered one of the most vital pioneers of said realm, that his newest record in a forty-year-career would suggest he’s only new here – and request that you show him around…Gil Scott-Heron, writer, musician, singer, messenger, came of age in Lincoln TN before coming up to New York and eventually fell under the wing of legendary jazz producer Bob Thiele – he is best known for his work in the genres of soul and r&b, credited as a progenitor of modern rap music. On this record, we get everything from gritty folk, to electro-funk, to orchestral blues, to New Orleans-tinged afrobeat, to his characteristic spoken word – blunt, stream of conscience, poetic, vivid, profound – with the music being as magnetic as his solitary voice – a raspy, booming growl delivers sonnets on a life scraped, smoked and shunted by the unforgiving elements of the city – a personal record that spans the simplicity of pulling up your socks in the morning, to more supernatural and uneasy to answer musings unveiling very personal pains of the political poet and spoken-word-soul singer.

Car Park

More info










Another in that line of lo-fi-weird-tasty-fuzzy-electro-leaning-groove-pop – you know all the vibes of Weird Tapes and Neon Indian but in an Ariel Pink spilled out sorta way: Glowy, glistening, underwater gurgled neon-tinged pop that feels a bit fragile and strung together on old dusty tascoms, the grooves are fuzzy, the synths are melodic and meditative, the vocal harmonies are echoed by reverb and the brushy beats seem to fight their way through the sheen of sonorous chimes and playful coaxing piano dances. Toro Y Moi (aka Chazwick Bundick) is part of a wave of solo fuzzed-pop composers who manipulate the capricious spacey bounce of traditional electro-pop and add varying elements of synth-born flumes – the music, which carries the delectability/celebratory-cherubic vibe of pop, has also, aptly, been described as private – because it feels like the kind of dance-groove record you’d play in your apartment, when you escape the club or when you decide to just lay low, warm, whirling, soulful, it sounds like the music that would fit your deepest set slumber of sleep – past REM and into the dreamiest of dreams, both flamboyant and soothing, simultaneously orchestral and lo-fi.