Toro Y Moi – What For?

Is Chazwick Bundick – aka Toro Y Moi – going back in time? His 2010 debut Causers of the This, a key milestone in the risibly-named ‘chillwave’ movement, seemed sent from the future: a thoughtful assemblage of glitches and gut feelings, emotional electronica for the end of a party. But since then, he seems to be regressing through genres. The laptop now fully unplugged, Bundick arrives squarely in retroland for this fourth album, which is, in essence, pure psychedelic rock.

The spirit of his earlier sound remains: a little spacey, a little funky, the sincerity of his singing never in doubt. Yet, in common with much psychedelia, repetition quickly sets in over these ten tracks, which blend into an amorphous blob of reverb and fuzzboxes. Perhaps Bundick doesn’t wish to bum out your trip with anything too jive, but a little of the incongruity and inventiveness that characterised his earlier efforts wouldn’t go amiss. [John Nugent]