Toro Y Moi emerged early on as a touchstone for the chillwave movement, and over the last fifteen years he has experimented with a wide range of musical ideas. Since his 2024 album Hole Erth, Chaz Bear has pursued diverse projects — covering Broken Social Scene, collaborating with Kenny Beats, and even demonstrating an AI-driven music tool at an AI developer conference. One can only hope he didn’t rely on that tool when crafting Unusua, the forthcoming album slated to drop in a couple of weeks.
A couple of weeks ago, Toro Y Moi released “Proof,” a mellow instrumental that blends a restrained, impressionistic piano with a brittle, restless synth arpeggio. Today, Bear quietly announced plans to release Unusua, simply by listing the album on Bandcamp without any additional commentary. We haven’t seen any PR for the record. According to the Bandcamp page, Bear performed, arranged, and produced the entire album by himself at Scenic Route in Berkeley and 2200 Studios in Sausalito.
Based on “Proof” and “Motive,” the new track Bundick shared today, it seems Unusua will be a piano-forward instrumental collection. Below, listen to those two tracks and view the LP’s tracklist.
TRACKLIST:
01 “Keynote”
02 “Motive”
03 “Proof”
04 “Poor Connection”
05 “Interval”
06 “Lull”
07 “Obsolete”
Unusua is out 11/20 on Company Studio.
