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 ukulele, a recorder, some castanets, a party horn — 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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