Chillwave (AKA: Glo-Fi, Dream-beat) is a style of Indietronica characterized by its emulation of the vintage aesthetics and musical styles of the 1980s/1990s as a means of evoking a sense of nostalgia. Its use of older analog musical styles are altered through modern recording technologies (laptops, samplers, etc.) and techniques to create a hazy dreamlike atmosphere. Common production elements include reverb, sidechaining, ducking, filtering and cutting / pasting.
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Chillwave (AKA: Glo-Fi, Dream-beat) is a style of Indietronica characterized by its emulation of the vintage aesthetics and musical styles of the 1980s/1990s as a means of evoking a sense of nostalgia. Its use of older analog musical styles are altered through modern recording technologies (laptops, samplers, etc.) and techniques to create a hazy dreamlike atmosphere. Common production elements include reverb, sidechaining, ducking, filtering and cutting / pasting. Older emulated styles of music include Synthpop, Synth Funk, Downtempo, as well as various types of Dance music with vocals and atmosphere that lean towards alt/indie genres such as Dream Pop, Indie Pop and Neo-Psychedelia. Chillwave was inspired by many disparate sources, but one of the most influential was Panda Bear's 2007 album Person Pitch.
Chillwave originated predominantly from the United States in the summer of 2009 and the term was coined in jest by the blogsite "Hipster Runoff". The most prominent chillwave artists around this time were Toro y Moi, Neon Indian, Washed Out, Memory Tapes and Nite Jewel. There were also acts such as ODESZA, Flume and Porter Robinson who infused chillwave techniques into EDM. As chillwave progressed in the 2010s, it was often combined with similarly nostalgic genres such as Hypnagogic Pop, Vaporwave, and Synthwave and was at times conflated with these other genres due to similar audio / visual styles and points of reference. Examples of such fusion acts include Esprit 空想 (Esprit Fantasy), Surfing and Whitewoods, who wed chillwave to vaporwave, creating a style which came to be known as “VHS Pop.” Similarly, acts such as HOME and Com Truise blended the genre with synthwave. In particular, the combination of the nostalgic synth textures of synthwave and the lo-fi, effects-based atmosphere of chillwave on HOME’s debut album Odyssey laid the groundwork for the subgenre Chillsynth. Despite chillwave's declining popularity by the end of the 2010s, labels such as 100% Electronica and Business Casual released seminal records within that time such as George Clanton's Slide and Windows 96's One Hundred Mornings. Chillwave would prove to be influential, with its distinct production techniques and atmosphere being utilized within genres such as Cloud Rap, Alternative R&B, Future Bass and Bedroom Pop.
