Chaz Bear doesn’t just release albums; he builds environments. For Mahal, the eighth record from Toro y Moi, the world begins with the turn of an ignition key — a sputtering 1942 Jeep Willys, to be exact — and ends with it shutting off. “I just wanted to put the listener in the Jeep,” he says. “You hear it start at the beginning, and it turns off at the end. It’s like a little movie.”
Except this particular movie also doubles as a love letter — to the Philippines, to soul and funk, to printed matter, to motion itself. The album’s title, Mahal, translates to both “love” and “expensive,” which Bear calls “a happy coincidence” given the custom-painted, chrome-smeared Jeepney he bought off eBay and dragged from Minnesota to Oakland. “It was originally a World War II Jeep brought to the Philippines in ’42, then converted into a bus in ’67,” he says. “Someone in Minneapolis was giving tours with it. Now it’s a pop-up sound system.”
He’s not kidding. For the record’s rollout, Toro y Moi literally pulled up to a local internet radio station, parked the Jeep, and blasted the album through speakers on the roof. “We posted that we were out there,” he says, “and way too many people showed up. It was like the Wienermobile.”
But beneath the fun is something deeper — a desire to reclaim and remix heritage. “Repurposing this Jeep felt right,” Bear says. “That idea of taking something from the States and transforming it somewhere else — that’s a big part of my identity.” The album folds those layers into its sound: psych guitars, 70s funk, and Filipino pop nostalgia woven together like a heat haze.
“I was listening to a lot of Chicago and Detroit soul — bands like the Chi-Lites — and Brazilian artists like Tim Maia,” he says. “Filipino music from the ‘70s already had that mix — disco, J-pop, ABBA, The Beatles — it’s all hybrid. So that’s the energy I wanted to channel.”
The result is a record that feels like driving through time with a broken radio scanning across eras. Songs bleed together through radio static and field recordings, all built around the tactile experience of a physical album. “I wanted Mahal to feel like an object,” he says. “That’s why the cover looks like a magazine. Records are some of the last printed things we actually cherish.”
That theme of physical connection runs through “Postman,” Mahal’s first single — a deceptively breezy funk groove about human contact in isolation. “It’s a silly song at first,” Bear admits, “but during lockdown, the mail carrier was sometimes the only person you saw. It became a shout-out to the people keeping us running.” He wanted to acknowledge the pandemic without naming it. “Everyone was going to write about COVID,” he says. “I just wrote around it — the feelings, not the word.”
Bear treats his career like a connected anthology, threading ideas across albums. Mahal is, in his mind, the sister record to 2015’s What For? “Even the titles line up,” he says. “What For? asks a question; Mahal answers it with love.” One of the album’s resurrected tracks, “Way Too Hot,” was originally a b-side from that era. “It fit perfectly,” he says. “It’s me jamming with my friends — that’s the vibe of this record.”
His long-running collaborator Ruban Nielson of Unknown Mortal Orchestra shows up again too, having laid down guitar parts back in 2017. “I’ve been working on this album for five years,” Bear says. “It’s nice when something you recorded that long ago still feels right.”
Beyond Toro y Moi, Bear’s been producing for artists like Uffie, Tanukichan, and Elijah Kessler — all under his Company Records imprint. “I just wrapped three albums,” he says. “It feels good to finally breathe and focus on this one.”
Touring will be a smaller, saner affair. “I’m keeping it simple,” he says. “Shorter runs, more often. Everyone’s still getting sick out there. I just want to keep a rhythm that’s sustainable.”
Still, if you see a chrome Jeepney cruising by with disco echo spilling out the windows, that’s probably him — taking the long way home.
Watch the interview above and check out the video below.
