Song Exploder - Toro y Moi - Half Dome

Episode Date: April 14, 2015

Over the past five years, Chaz Bundick, aka Toro y Moi, has made music that's spanned a range of genres and styles. On his newest album, What For?, he shifted styles again. In this episode, Chaz explains why. He'll break down the song Half Dome, named after a landmark in Yosemite National Park that's a popular hike, but also a difficult one.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi K. Hirwe. Over the past five years, Chaz Bundik, aka Toro Imoa, has made music that spanned a range of genres and styles. On his newest album, What For, he's shifted styles again. Coming up, Chaz explains why. He'll break down the song Half Dome, named after the hiking destination in Yosemite National Park. Here's Tori Moi from an interview recorded live at the Noise Pop Festival in San Francisco. Hello. My name is Chaz Bundyck.

My wife asked me if I want to do half-dom. I was like, sure. You know, moving out to California, I've only been here for like three and a half years. The nature is just crazy out in California compared to South Carolina. So I've been really like getting back into nature and trying to really see as many different crazy natural things as possible. I thought about it on the hike. I could probably write about this because I'm really scared right now. This song was written on guitar first. I wanted the progression to have a lot of chords but not be really connected to jazz or funk.

I knew that I just didn't want to get locked into that R&B thing again, so. Mainly because I had trouble trying to write like other types of lyrics within that genre of like R&B and sort of more soulful progressions. I figured guitar-based music was a good solution. solution. I figured like might as well just go for rock so I can try to get some other lyric ideas out. Going to go see a show. Friday night we go watch music. Or going to go hike half dome.

Saturday we do half dome. For this song I wrote the guitar and the vocals at the same time. That wasn't all too bad. I had this thing written on my blackboard, and it just said, like, what do you do? How does that make you feel? And I would just look at it whenever I'm writing my lyrics. It was just like a moment in time, really.

Just talking about what I did on Friday and what I'm going to do on Saturday. And then after I did that thing on Saturday, this is how I feel. My guru sound guy, he built me this bass. I got this bass for like 20 bucks at Goodwill in South Carolina. It's all in pieces. I just gave it to him. And he fixed it for like another 20 bucks.

And just like put this built-in overdrive in it. It sounds crazy. It sounds like a synth. The bass is doing like this weird chromatic shift down. So I was like, what kind of chords go on top of that scale down? My friend Harry, he was like, you should do one of those octave things. I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, you know, like Jackson 5, like, like,

and I was like, okay. I'll try it. That was a blatant Jackson 5 reference. So I had this loop that I played on the drums and I just leaped it a bunch. I had my drummer, Andy, replay it live. I've never worked with outside drummers. It was cool because I could sort of just direct him. He's a real drummer so he could just do it so smooth.

He would like throw in these fills. And then I got these ideas to sort of cut the bass out or cut the whole band out and just have the drum fill. I thought that was very cool. That keyboard sound is, it's a melaton going through an LFO sort of modulator. The LFO, for people who don't know, it's just the low frequency oscillator. It just makes the pitch pretty much going to go like this. So I just had it going fast and then I just slowed it down.

The song was pretty much done. I just really wanted to have like another element there to take it to another level. But I thought it would be cool to just have a friend on it. Ruben Nielsen from Under Memorial Orchestra was playing the lead. guitar. His guitar tone is like a signature sound. It fit really well. Yeah, I reverse the guitar intro and put it in between verses. I thought it was like a nice little reference to, you know, psychedelia. I knew that I wanted him on the record just because he shreds on guitar. I was like, man, that would be so nice because I can't shred on guitar. And he's doing backup vocals.

I had him do a falsetto and he was really kind of shy about it. I was like, just just do it. You must be waiting, you must be waiting. You must be waiting, you must be waiting, you must be waiting. And these backing vocals, sounds like you say no one. Look at who you are, bitched. But it only happens in that one vocal, and if I play the rest of the song, you can't even hear it. Right. Yeah, it was intentional.

You just throw it in there just because it's fun. You know, the Beatles would do that. It's just like throwing like random stuff that's like inaudible. And it's for purposes like this. And just like, hey, I found this. What is this? Thank you. And now here's Half Dome by Toro Imoa in its entirety.

Visit SongExploder.net to buy this song and to learn more about Tori Moi. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length. And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikaze Her Way. I started making Song Exploder. when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations

about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby,

Vagabond, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Weinrobe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band.

The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs were out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. You can find all the past and future episodes of SongExploder at songexplotor.net or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts. Find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows.

Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. My name is Rishi-Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.