A couple of months ago, Shugo Tokumaru released a video on YouTube that showed him preparing an elaborate meal from an unlikely set of ingredients. In it, he took a selection of toy instruments ¡ª a ukulele, a recorder, some castanets, a party horn ¡ª and chopped them up, dusted a few pieces with flour, then simmered them together and served them in a miniature drum over a bed of pulped sheet music.
It was the last in a series of videos that he had posted over the previous two years, documenting the recording process that yielded his latest album, ¡°Toss.¡± As visual metaphors go, it was also pretty accurate.
The record, Tokumaru¡¯s sixth, marks a significant departure for the 36-year-old indie-pop polymath. On his previous two albums, ¡°In Focus?¡± and ¡°Port Entropy,¡± he played every instrument himself except the drums. For ¡°Toss,¡± he still left ample room for his own instrumental talents, but he also recruited a host of collaborators, including members of his regular tour band, a chamber orchestra, and drummer Greg Saunier, of U.S. avant-rock act Deerhoof.
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