Haruomi Hosono

I've loved Haruomi Hosono and Yellow Magic Orchestra ever since my sophomore year of high school, and last night I got to see the man himself play the Mayan Theater.

I was hoping he'd play some of his electronic material along with his original Okinawa-Hawaii-Memphis fusion music, but it was not to be. He spoke to the crowd about how as a child in post-WWII Japan he fell in love with American music of the 1940s and 50s: Irving Berlin, boogie-woogie, Bennie Goodman, doo-wop, and Disney soundtracks.

The live set was firmly in that vein. He did play a few songs from his electronic albums: "Body Snatchers" from SFX, "Honeymoon" from Songs From The Quiet Lodge, and a couple others. These were all in the "old" style of the other songs and were almost unrecognizable. The one exception was the encore: "Cosmic Surfin" from YMO's Solid State Survivor, which was what the crowd really came for.

Hosono has a great voice but his vocals were extremely hard for me to hear. I wanted to throttle the sound engineer. The rest of the mix was great though so it must have been a conscious choice.

I had a great time and was finally able to see one of my all-time favorite musicians live!

Toro y Moi brings on the funky R&B inspired beats that makes everyone on the dance-floor want to move.
Toro y Moi is the stage-name of Chaz Bundick who composes and produces all of his fresh, danceable groves. One of many things that makes Toro y Moi’s music so interesting is the diverse elements he mixes into his music, which include funk, R&B, and synthpop. Chaz Bundick also shows his interest in mixing elements through his choice of stage-name, Toro y Moi, which is a multilingual expression consisting of phrases in Spanish and French. This interest in mixing diverse elements together could have come from Chaz’s diverse upbringing having been raised by an African-American father and a Filipino mother. Toro Y Mo has been noted for helping form a new brand of genre labeled chillwave, which is noted for extensively blending the elements of effects processing, synths, and sampling. This style of music creates a washed over effect to the music that reminds one of relaxing at the beach on a sunny day.
Although Toro y Moi has features of his music that have a chill quality to it, he also has elements of the music that contain funky bass lines and punchy synth lines that make for great club music. When performing live, Chaz is often accompanied by a backing band consisting of a bass player, a drummer, and guitarist that help brighten the live sound of the performance. There are usually displays of atmospheric lights that wash over the stage creating a visceral like landscape, but then there are flashy lights that beam back and forth over this landscape that incites people to get up and dance.
Overall Toro y Moi puts on one chill performance with his deep melodic hooks and groovy bass lines that will keep the audience dancing with glee.