In the last year I have acquired both a digitakt and digitone again after stupidly selling them off to fund guitar gear for a band that didn’t last more than half a year. When I originally owned them, I honestly did not use the digitakt as anything more than a glorified drum machine. Since I got one back, I’ve really been trying to push these two boxes and actually sample my other analog synths and mangle those samples into something new.
Today while working on what was originally supposed to be an ambient techno track, I somehow accidentally created something that sounds more like a chillwave track from 2009. It made me a little nostalgic for that time and sound. I really had only started getting good with synths about a year before that whole trend came out. I remember the feeling then that you could just be a bedroom producer and get discovered on the internet and have a following. That seems a lot harder now.
Just wondering how many other people enjoyed that genre, even if most of it was terrible and was more of an internet joke than anything else. Anybody here actually made chillwave music or still does?
Every single genre ever created or waiting to be created can be belittled in this way. One man’s pinnacle of hip musical excellence is another man’s cheesy elevator music.
No one style, type, or way of making music holds the high ground over another excepting peoples personal opinions.
This is where the old adage comes into play - opinions are like certain orifices, everyone’s got one and they all stink the same. If you made something you like, and it had the trappings of ‘chill wave’ or any other wave for that matter, then that is all that matters.
The first person to come along and tell another person that the music they like is wrong or bad or played out or stupid is the first person to reveal themselves as a buffoon, a clown.
I enjoy making all the waves. Synth, chill, synth pop, cinematic, dark wave, Outrun, and the rest.
I don’t know where the exercise comes from (an xkcd maybe?) but essentially, the entire internet (and irl) is full of people clamoring to exclaim all of the things that they hate that everybody else loves, but it’s an entirely different exercise to go the other way and name something you love that everyone else hates. I think this is my personal answer to that question.
Or maybe it was simply the small pocket of time in '09-11 that coalesced with the music for me.
Anyway, whatever label or genre that some of my favorite albums of that time were slapped with are 100% responsible for my interest in electronic music in the first place.
Strong agree. I’ve spent plenty of hours making vaporwave despite no one I know IRL “getting it” or understanding that some people actually enjoy it. Another genre that many consider an internet fad but actually has quite a strong and long running scene.
The only chillwave albums I liked were Within and Without by Washed Out and Dive by Tycho.
However, unfortunately, most of the chillwave stuff was weak, uninteresting, unauthentic and uninspiring. Kind of something like post-punk revival, so saturated yet so entrenched in the past it’s trying to mimic.
But this thing died down around 2013. After that, it became vaporwave. I was already too old for that as it’s primary demographic was teenagers, it was on youtube (I was still rocking an ipod back then) and it sounded bad on proper headphones.
Chillwave = best. I still listen to all of that stuff and I aspire a lot for those types of sounds in my own music.
Toro Y Moi has a new album out last week that sounds like his previous work. I’d say chillwave hasn’t really gone anywhere, they just don’t call it that anymore.
Yea chillwave overlapped with so many other genres and was kind of more of an esthetic than a style as a lot of artist grew or got more into certain styles they become more associated with the other genres the incorporated, but toro and washed out always seem to keep a bit of the vibe strong in their releases…
The teasers from panda bears new release sounds like it’s gonna be pretty amazing
Still love that nostalgic futurism vibe which Chillwave and Waporwave has… Hyperpop is another genre ive come to really enjoy, mostly due to SOPHIE being the gateway drug
Still love and in my opinion the most beautiful thing about the current musical environment (or at least the view of it that spotify has micro-targetted to me) is that literally anything goes, the ultimate mixing (and perhaps demise) of genres is happening.
I think I might miss witchhouse
(actually I don’t… still listen to it all the time)
I can see why one would feel nostalgic chillwave… it really captured a point in time that was both optimistic and reverential, and combined electronic and conventional instruments in a way that seemed fresh and new at the time. Some of holds up quite well.
Same on witch house. I actually really liked the newer Salem album a lot more than I thought I would. And Holy Other coming back out with a release was pretty exciting too.
liked it for a bit, when Rosso Corsa first popped up ages ago. old Mitch Murder, Action Jackson, Arpnet, D/A/D…seems like some of the old ones I knew moved on from RC.
