Who are they? Chaz Bundick better known as Toro y Moi, is a singer-songwriter, producer and talented artist who managed to bring music into many forms of chilwave could ever be. His first album “Causer of This” was released in 2010 under Carpark Records, which remak the beginning of the era of chilwave and synth-pop’s music alongside with Neon Indian, Ernest Green to the indie pop MGMT, and become ultimate summer compilation track that year. On the following year he released his second album “Underneath the Pine”, made him more famouse world wide and by then he also expand his music into more danceable indipop, which can be hear on his EP “Freaking Out”. With the sound of distorted keyboards, low end drum rolls, and weird shape shifting backsound, his songs mostly became Dj’s favourite track to be remixed. Chaz also has a side project focusing more on dance-style music called “Les Sins.”

So how’s this new album goes? It has been a while since his second album released, but I must say I’m glad that I can see his live performance before his 3rd album comes out, since this album is pretty much not as dancefull as his previous two. Well if we listen to “Harm Change” and “Studies” we can see a slightly different sound with previous album, which I think it’s good, so we doesn’t have to guess who sing this song, hence, he might want to make this album more mature, as he added more of house and 90s ambient electro pop sound. We can hear those kind of feeling in “Say That” and “So Many Details” and in “Rose Quartz” you can imagine yourself at the dark clubbing lounge in the 80s, with low glammy pop ambient sound. I like “Touch” though, mainly because it was a nice song with not so much of electronic sound, you know just a simple song that you use in the afternoon or when you want to have a piece of mind while reading a book or something. He put up some tempo in “Cola” , “High Living” and “How’s it Wrong” which somehow I think it’s a bit borring if you listen to it too much, I mean it’s nothing special here, not that ambient but not too upbeat, just flat. Another song I like in this album is probably “Never Matter” with some vocal samples on the back like some cheering from Michael Jackson or I don’t know some old afro dude shouting, but somehow make the song more fun. In general we can see that he use more of synths and vocal samples and add it here and there like psycedelic insturment sound like album. So, if you are more into low key elecetronic music kind of people and like to experiment more of the mixing sound, you probably like this album.

With two side-by-side stages and 14 acts St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival in Singapore this year probably was one of the biggest festival, which been waited by 7800 Indie music lovers around Asia.

The festival itself started around 2pm in the middle of the day, and lots of nice good looking hispters already gather to see Cults, duo from NYC with their first song Abducted followed by You Know What I Mean, Slow Song and after 40 minuets perform they closed it with their hits Oh My God which taken from their self titled album.

Band which famous with Shook Down song, Yuck came out as the second band and with their noise and shoegazing sound, the band start to play their hits like Holing out, The Wall, Georgia, Suicide Policeman, Milkshake and closed with Rubber. As the venue getting full with hipster crowd, another NY duo Chairlift which just released their second album Amanaemonesia recently, played hits songs both from their first and second albums such as Take It Out on Me, Wrong Opinion, Bruises, Met Before, I Belong in Your Arms, Evident Utensil and off course Amanaemonesia.

The crowd also can enjoy their late lunch inside the venue companied with sounds from Austra with their unique girl-band appearance. Followed by Girls, the crowd was led by Christopher Owens and his guitar to paid tribute to Whitney Houston by sang I Will Always Love You before playing the band’s set.

Another band that have gain lots of Asian fans since their tour last year was The Drums. The band played songs all dancing shoes lover wants to hear such as Best Friend, Let’s Go Surfing, What You Were, Money, The Future, Me and The Moon and Forever and Ever Amen.

As the sun goes down, the hype on the fest gets up. Continued with Twin Shadow, Anna Calvi and Laura Marling, the crowd can cater around and enjoyed the late sunset with their friends and loves one. And then the emotion gets rock again when The Pains Of Being Pure at Heart went to the stage and played their nu gaze indie pop songs like , I Wanna Go All The Way, Belong, Young Adult Friction, A Teenager In Love, and Heart In Your Heartbreak. Wasn’t enough with rock sound, Toro Y Moi come up and made the crowd dance to their New Beat, All Alone, Talamak, Still Sounds, Freaking Out and even Low Shoulder.

Feist, The Horros and M83 probably was the most waited band of the night, and with songs and live act that holding breath the bands succeed to made the crowd jumping around, nodding their heads and even dancing like no tomorrow. And to top it all of Anthony Gonzalez and his live band closed the festival with epic performance from the stage atmosphere, lightning, to their act itself succeed made every penny paid off. Surely after this festival as Danny Rogers of Laneway said, we couldn’t wait to see more of ‘right music’ come to asia next year!