Toro Y Moi announces 'Mahal'
Toro y Moi, a.k.a Chaz Bear, announces his new album MAHAL due April 29 via Dead Oceans. The 13-track project marks the seventh studio album from Bear under the Toro y Moi moniker. To celebrate the announcement, Toro y Moi shares two singles from the forthcoming record 'Postman' b/w 'Magazine.' Each of the new singles arrives with accompanying visuals. 'Postman,' directed by Kid.
Studio, sees Toro and friends riding around the colorful San Francisco landscape in his Filipino jeepney, seen on the cover of MAHAL. 'Magazine,' directed by Arlington Lowell, sees Toro and Salami Rose Joe Louis, who supplies vocals on the track, dressed vibrantly in a photo studio spliced with various colorful graphics and playful edits.
MAHAL's announcement and singles arrive on the heels of Toro's highly celebrated 2019 album Outer Peace, which Pitchfork described as "one of his best albums in years" along with his Grammy-nominated 2020 collaboration with Flume, 'The Difference,' which was also featured in a global campaign for Apple's Airpods. Today's releases mark the first from Toro y Moi since signing to Secretly Group label Dead Oceans. Dead Oceans is an independent record label established in 2007 featuring luminaries like Japanese Breakfast, Khruangbin, Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes, Mitski, Slowdive and more.
Toro y Moi’s seventh studio album, MAHAL, is the boldest and most fascinating journey yet from musical mastermind Chaz Bear. The record spans genre and sound—encompassing the shaggy psychedelic rock of the 1960s and ‘70s, and the airy sounds of 1990s mod-post-rock—taking listeners on an auditory expedition, as if they’re riding in the back of Bear’s Filipino jeepney that adorns the album’s cover. But MAHAL is also an unmistakably Toro y Moi experience, calling back to previous works while charting a new path forward in a way that only Bear can do.
MAHAL is the latest in an accomplished career for Bear, who’s undoubtedly one of the decade’s most influential musicians. Since the release of the electronic pop landmark Causers of This in 2009, subsequent records as Toro y Moi have repeatedly shifted the idea of what his sound can be. But there’s little in Bear’s catalog that will prepare you for the deep-groove excursions on MAHAL, his most eclectic record to date.
"I wanted to make a record that featured more musicians on it than any other record of mine,” he explains. “To have them live on that record feels grounded, bringing a communal perspective to the table.” As a result, MAHAL is lush and surprising at every turn, from the cool-handed 'The Loop,' which recalls Sly and the Family Stones, to the elastic psych rock of 'Foreplay' and the dizzying Mulatu Astatke-recalling of 'Last Year.'
