Toro y Moi talks Arthur Russell and astral jazz

On Chaz Bundick's most recent album as Toro y Moi, this year's Anything in Return, he plays the role of lothario. On lead single So Many Details, he croons to a suitor, ‘This ain't appropriate now, push my hand off your side / There's no one else around, I just wanna tease your eyes.’ In the accompanying video, he sits impassively in a turtleneck as a doll-like woman dances around him to the track's bouncing R'n'B groove.

It wasn't always this way. The 26-year-old now resides in Berkeley, California, but grew up in South Carolina playing indie rock in high school – not the electronic music that he's honed and explored over three albums. “I really grew up on pop, not house music,” he says, in a call from his Berkeley home. “Listening to, like, Michael Jackson and Prince, and indie stuff too – the Pixies, My Bloody Valentine and Weezer.”

Musically, he has a short attention span. His first album, 2010's Causers of This, became synonymous with 'chillwave' – a catch-all label for a kind of blissed-out, hipster-friendly electronica, the aural equivalent of a Hipstamatic filter. Used pejoratively, the term belied the promise of the record, and its echoic synths, sweet hooks and underplayed lyrics. He abandoned guitar music so early on, he says, because “I guess it was... getting bored. And [I was] just wanting to try as many things as possible. Not necessarily being tired of guitars, but wanting to find something else to experiment with.”

Of South Carolina he says: “There's not much going on, but it's a nice place to grow up.” That quietude perhaps explains the slightly esoteric nature of Bundick's music – his records have melded elements of folk, house, hip-hop, and phantasmagoric jazz. “Even now there's not house music or anything in South Carolina – electronic music is definitely something still, to this day, on the down-low there,” he elaborates. “I find that a lot of my favourite electronic musicians are people that sort of found electronic music on their own, their musical background was more than just that.”

His own musical education was somewhat the reverse to that of most people: his Dad gave him a love of indie-rock – he's “a straight-up into rock kind of guy” – with Bundick's exposure to jazz coming later. “For a while I felt like jazz music was boring or something,” he recalls. “It took me so long to find out about the kind of jazz that I enjoy – experimental, astral type jazz. The fusion stuff is definitely what I'm into.” His second record, 2011's Underneath the Pine, drew heavily on 1970s jazz and pop in its acoustic chord progressions, Roy Ayers-esque synth lines and vocal harmonies. Bundick thinks the appeal of that era's music is “the seriousness that it has, but it's still accessible. I think that's the most important aspect of Toro y Moi as a project – accessibility. And yet still wanting to explore.”

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“For the most part, my career before this was making sandwiches” – Chaz Bundick

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'Fusion' is an apt word for his music, moving as it does between genres and eras, cherry-picking different sounds and textures. In that respect, Bundick's work echoes that of Arthur Russell, a similarly eclectic artist from the late 70s and 80s, someone he describes as “one of my favourite songwriters and musicians. He was the full package – he's got amazing lyrics and amazing songs. He never worried about making it big, he just kept doing what he was doing and that's all that matters. He was just passionate and motivated the whole time and not worried about the big hit – that's what everyone's trying to go for nowadays.”

Bundick becomes animated when the subject shifts to the state of contemporary American pop music. While pop auteurs still exist – the influence of The-Dream, for instance, resounds throughout Anything in Return – most of the singles that dominate the US charts resemble soundalike trance-pop, designed by committee to target as many overseas markets as possible. “I feel like a lot of musicians are trying to appeal to a 'world' audience and it's not necessary,” he says. “Especially with pop music, everyone's doing four-to-the-floor now. No one wants a good album, they want the one single that can be reposted, spread and go viral. A huge chorus is all that matters, how it sounds at festivals, about getting everyone amped. It's not as dynamic as it used to be. Everything's so calculated and everyone's figured out the 'perfect' pop song.”

Still, he shies away from describing Anything in Return as his 'vision' of what a pop record should be. “It's everything I'm interested in, from psychedelic rock to fusion jazz,” he says. “I was just trying to make an album that's contemporary but still shows a lot of my influences from the second album. In terms of the kind of album it's supposed to be, I don't even know. I don't really think that every album should be glorified as the most epic album to come out ever. All you can do is keep making more music, if you're inspired you're inspired.”

His recent move to Berkeley perhaps explains his third album's sunnier sound – reflective of the renewed sense of freedom that comes with leaving your home behind and starting again. His first to involve studio production, it bristles with shiny hooks, while, for the first time, his vocals take centre stage, stepping out of a previous haze of reverb and delay. For Bundick, moving to California was “a different kind of culture shock. A lot of people, when they think of California, they think of LA. Which is really wrong. Where I live, in Berkeley, it's a small college town, it's not big. It's right across the bay from San Francisco. It's a super progressive city. Overall I like it so much more. The food is amazing, the weather is always really good. It's super chilled.”

Back in Carolina, Bundick worked for years on casual jobs; he laughs when I ask, naively, if he ever did shift work, before listing them off. “Oh yeah for sure, man! I started off at Wendy's. I did fast food, restaurant stuff for a good five to six years. And then I worked at a printing shop that resells printer cartridges. And then I worked at a bagel shop after that. And then I got one summer job that was a graphic design internship. And then I just sort of took off. But for the most part my career before this was making sandwiches.”

This 'take off', which he seems to be taking in his stride, has also seen him recently releasing records on Dan Snaith (aka Caribou)'s Jiaolong imprint – instrumental house tracks under the moniker Les Sins – and completing a tour of South America, which “was fun, it was cool to go out there," he says.

“But personally, I like to do things in moderation,” he continues. “I don't like going out on the road for too long. It's good to have a life and still try to... make dinner.” Above all, he's a compulsive music maker and consumer – or, as he puts it: “I always like to find new music. And I like it weird.”