The Sire: Chaz “Toro Y Moi” Bundick
The Sound: Chillwave/Eighties Synth-Funk
The Scene: The Relentless Garage, Highbury, London, UK
Toro Y Moi graced East London with the infectious sounds of his South Carolinian synth-wave swelter on Wednesday at Canonbury’s Relentless Garage. The venue packed 600 people in a mingling of Red Stripes and sailor stripes: yuppies, hipsters, blipsters, iPhone photographers, and Instagrandmas on sway in a hazy hole-in-the-wall. The mood was mellow, the bassline ebb, beasted, flowed, and bellowed, as Chaz Bundick brought his signature Southern Hipstertality to Highbury.
Synesthetic in a subtle way, the set blended tech-propulsed but tangible sounds with soft neon spotlights. Rhythmic red, sweltering cerulean, and whimsical white bathed the pit in a chill new wave disco blues experience. The crowd was alive, in an “I think, therefore I am” kind of way, slightly off-sync head bobbing, Rodin-inspired chin perching, scrutinizing eyes, planted feet, dulled roars of dialoguing audiophonic academicians… engaging through analysis.
Slowly but surely, with the progressive pulsation, increasing echo, diffused reverb, and raspberry rise, so the crowd did ease their minds, rested their mouths, and swayed as the music played. If London warehouse art galleries had a scene for their soundtrack – Toro Y Moi at The Relentless Garage would be it… progressively inebriating with an evolutionary build, new chillwave with an old soul, antiampitheatrical whisper wired synth acoustic – an instant vintage futuristic fresh sound apt for London’s most limousine of liberals and champagne of socialists, the funkiest of the soul brothers and the most cosmopolitan of ears.
Bundick expanded his live repertoire, moving between genres, infusing disco and funk with his chillwave base. Beneath and beyond the peaked barrage of Kenna-esque oscillating dance crescendo, Toro Y Moi built the undercurrent of electronic deluge; easing the crowd with a sonic nightcap of retro futuristic fade, liberating the HI-Q subterranean socialites from their spellbinding cerebral aural suspension, and leaving the sweet linger of Charleston charm in the London airwaves.
Watch This Space
Photo Credit: Zoran Veselinovic
(The) Epochauserie 