Chillwave Music

 

So there is a big buzz about the new genre in music called "Chillwave". To me basically it is the fact that so called indie bands have become so successful and popular that there needs to be an underground form of music that is totally independant. Myself and Craig who is a music producer in Brooklyn had a wee chat today about it and we where trying to pinpoint the term "Chillwave" So here it is and a tune by Toro Y Moi to help make sense of it all.

Chillwave (also referred to as glo-fi) is a term used to describe a genre of post-music that emerged when some guy with access to the internet invented a new word. It is characterized by heavy use of effects processing, synthesizers, looping, sampling, and heavily filtered vocals with simple melodic lines. Its musical predecessors include the synthpop of the 1980s, shoegaze^[1], ambient, and various types of world music. Chillwave is notably different from those influences because it often produced by outsider musicians recording in home studios.^[1]

The term was coined in July 2009 by Carles, creator of the blog Hipster Runoff.^[2] In a post about Washed Out, Carles listed many potential names, including "no-fi" and "ChillHouse" but decided on "Chillwave" as most representative of the sound of artists such as Washed Out.^[3]

It has been suggested that chillwave is a response to 2008's day-glo scene, which was characterized by more aggressive club music.^[4]

Some of the early chillwave albums include Universal Studios Florida's Ocean Sunbirds, Big Spider's Back's Warped, Nite Jewel's Good Evening. Other bands of the genre include Neon Indian, Memory Tapes, Blissed Out, By Bye Blackbird, MillionYoung, Small Black, The Pillars Of Creation, Chill Murray, Chill Pullman, Ducktails, Lone, Toro Y Moi, Washed Out, Lester Brown, Soft Slip, and Corona Lite.^[1][4]

Phil Thomas Katt is considered to be the 'godfather of chillwave.' Influences can be clearly heard on the 1993 album, "Curious."