No Filler Music Podcast - Ep 41: Washed Out

Episode Date: August 14, 2019

​On this week's episode, we take a look at the emergence of chillwave and the role of those dime-a-dozen music blogs of the early 2000s in helping launch this short-lived & blissed-out, shoe-gaze dance genre. Our main dig is on the DIY home recordings of Ernest Greene Hemingway Jr., aka Washed Out, who, along with Toro Y Moi and Neon Indian, were the three main influencers of the chillwave sound. We give a listen to songs from his first three releases spanning from 2009 to 2011. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. It's really, my recording style is very naive. I just do what I do. And it's really crazy that people have kind of come up to me and have these crazy theories and

explanations behind the stuff I'm doing. It's very naive. and there's not much thought. It's just I kind of do it. I mean, I feel like I'm a pretty average person. And welcome to No Filler, the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms

that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Quentin. Got my brother Travis with me. Welcome back, dude. It's been a couple weeks. Oh, hey. Mr. Podcast here, you got a podcast

going on with your company now, huh? Oh, okay. I can, I can drop that. I'll give you a little shout out. So if you're interested at all in web development, web design, web

accessibility, or just tech in general, check out 600 pixels. That's 600 PX. You can find us on SoundCloud. You can't find us on iTunes right now. Do you want to know why? Q? No.

Because Apple, has a broken form on their podcast submission page. Oh, so we got in just some time, huh? I don't know how long it's been broken, but I can't be the first one to bring that to their attention. But I, you know, I fill out the contact form and send them a screenshot of like the error in the code that I saw. I was like, what the fuck, man?

You know, it's just always surprising when you stumble upon a bug like that on a company like Apple or or Google or something like that it's like man what are y'all doing over there yeah but anyway it'll be on it'll be on iTunes at some point but you can check us out on SoundCloud I think it's a

cool idea to do that like within a company just for shits and grins yeah it's just you know we have so much talent at our company that you know might as well flip on a microphone and record people you know and plus we're trying to reach out to people outside of our company too but anyway 600 px uh there is a website 600 px.m and you can check us out there thanks for letting me plugola that thing dude so usually uh I briefly mention who we're talking about

when uh when we start recording but I always feel like I talk for like five 10 minutes before you even get a word in and that's weird because I introduce you and then just keep talking uh Today, we're covering washed out. And he is one of the first on the scene for the chill wave genre of music that we are very familiar with because it turns out that chill wave, first off, it just came out to nowhere, the term. and it was one of the first genres to kind of have its movement on the internet only. With like MySpace and whatnot, band camp. Yeah, where the popularity of these bands were fueled by music blogs.

And yeah, like you said, like MySpace and band camp, stuff like that. And you and I were right smack dab in the middle of it, dude. Yeah. We had our own music blog at the time. Music blogs were just a dime a dozen back then, man. And we were one of those dimes, you know. Yeah. Or we were one of those dozen, I guess, not one of those dimes.

Fucking Burp FM. Yeah, I mean, there were a ton of them out there. Man, Corrilla versus Bear, are they still a thing? I don't know. That's nutty if it is. Yeah, they're still around, dude. They are still around. Carilla versus Bear best albums of 2018.

They haven't had a site update since we were last checking it out. How do they do it? Hey man, I mean, there was no reason why New Dust couldn't have kept going. I just at the time didn't have the knowledge to keep those hackers out of our database. Yeah. So washed out, I feel like, was the first chill wave artist that I became familiar with. And this is one guy, his name's Ernest Weather. Is it Weatherly?

Ernest Weatherly Green Jr. And that little intro clip I played was him kind of just trying to bring the point across that like, I'm nothing special. Like, I think it's funny that, you know, people are writing about my music and, you know, trying to pick it apart. Like, like, you know, like, it's all planned.

But, like, I'm, there's no real, like, formula. You know, I'm just kind of messing around on my laptop at home. and, you know, this is kind of what came out. Did he, did he, that clip? Was that from early, early on his career? Because it must have been, right? Yes. Okay.

Yeah. Like 2010 or something like that. So his, the album of his that kind of like made him uber famous in a very short time was an EP called Life of Leisure. That came out in 2009. I want to say that interview was, yeah, we're on that time or maybe 2010. But the reason I picked that clip is because kind of like we're saying, like, chill wave just kind of like it doesn't really mean anything, but it's, it's kind of in that

hypnagogic pop vein, which we've talked about a lot of times. I think the word chill is appropriate. You know what I mean? Like the word chill wave, wave, you know, the word wave is usually used to like to accompany like a new a new sound you know like a new wave back in the day right so i can kind of see why chill wave became uh like a term because it's like it's just really you know laid back like leisurely type of music you know chill music yeah you know usually very hypnagogic even though it doesn't really mean anything i can see i can see where the where the term came from so actually we can point to exactly where the term like is there a dude that coined it yeah and it was just another music blogger like us uh a guy that goes by the name carls um he's kind of an anonymous

blogger he had a website called a hipster runoff i remember that it was a site that was active between 2008 and 2013 pretty much the exact time that's the same round yeah so um he said he basically was just throwing a bunch of silly names on a blog post as he was typing it up and just kind of picked one that stuck. Some other names that he proposed for the genre.

Chill Brocore Post-Anco rock as an animal collective. Conceptual blog core and post-electro. I can see why Chill-wave stuck. Yeah, so the post that he wrote

the way he wraps it up, He says, I feel like Chill Wave is supposed to sound like something that was playing in the background of an old VHS cassette that you found in your attic from the late 80s, early 90s. That falls in line with that hypnagogic pop genre that we've talked about before with Tyco. And so like I had mentioned, Chillwave was one of the first genres to acquire an identity online. So it's an example of linking musical trends by internet outlets rather than geographic location. You know, so in the past, musical movements were once determined by a city or venue. You know, think about the punk rock scene with its origins in like New York City and, you know, all the bands that burst out of the UK in the 60s.

Now it's just some blogger or journalist that can find three or four. random bands around the country, tie them together with a few commonalities between them and call it a genre. And I think that's a good point because I can't define really exactly like exactly how chill wave sounds, you know? I mean, yeah, there's definitely like defining characteristics of it. Like you know it when you, you know it when you hear it, you know? Yeah. For me, Chillwave is washed out. And I think that might just be because of how important that his life of leisure EP was for us at that time, you know. He was the first one that really caught attention. And like, the first time we associated a sound with the word chill wave was listening to washed out. Or at least

for me it was. Yeah. So some precursors to the style. So there's a pretty good article on pitch for about, you know, this guy kind of dives into what he sees and hears as maybe like bands that that these chill wave artists must have been influenced from. Band called Slow Dive that was around in the late 80s, early 90s, who I'd never heard of, and I think we're going to do our side track on them, dude. They're kind of like this blissful, like kind of shoegazy, like new wave band. Their singer really sounds like how Ernest sings. and washed out. Casino versus Japan.

Bords of Canada, Ariel Pink. We've covered boards of Canada as well. We did them as a sidetrack earlier on. They are definitely in that hypnagogic pop style, you know? Yeah. Where, like, it does sound like,

like you can hear like warps from an old tape cassette, you know, or VHS recording. That's kind of what it conjures up to me. So another quote from, I believe this is from that pitchfork article. If there's anything that sets this current wave of chill, apart from the long list of acts who've struck the same tones before,

it's the way it's made that visual sense work to its advantage. These musicians can sound like as many blurry, danceable, blest-out classics as they like. But when we listen to them, we don't think about other music. We leap straight to images, TV shows, beaches, sunglasses, sunglasses, animation styles. So we're not covering one album today. I wanted to play a select few songs from three of his releases. I didn't know this, but right before Life of Leisure came out,

he released another full-length album called High Times. Actually, the intro song that I faded us in with was track four off of that one. It's called, or I'm sorry, track two. It's called Good Luck. So I kind of wanted to show just kind of how he evolved even just in the two years between the three. So his first legitimate full length was released a couple years later after Life of Leisure came out. It's called Within and Without. So let's play some tunes.

The first one I'm going to play is track four on High Times. again this came out in 2009 so this song is called Olivia dude that that does sound like like a soundtrack to a 80s action film you know yeah I mean it's this it's the heavy like synth keyboard yeah and it sounds like he's using old keyboards you know and like old drum uh drum machines and stuff yeah that's that hypnotic pop man and it's you know, something that's interesting. He's very similar, like the trajectory that Tyco has as, like, as a musician and growing as a

musician is almost exactly the same as Ernest. You know, it was just a bedroom setup to begin with. And since then, Washed Out has evolved and it's a full band now. Same with Tyco on what he's doing. But, yeah, it was just, again, like the DIY bedroom. room recordings. He said he just had a few mics set up in his room. He would use the program reason to record and arrange and sequence. And then he would have his guitar and a MIDI keyboard, and that was it. So that's what he did all the way up to within and without, which came out in 2011.

So yeah. And he says the, you know, like kind of like in that intro clip, you're saying you're no really like there's no formula there's this you know this is just the music that I'm making he says an average washed out song kind of goes like this I'll pull a small little piece of like a sustained note from like an old 70s disco song and then he'll transpose it onto his keyboard and play it like a synthesizer you know so he can play whatever note he wants from that sample so 70s disco you know it's it's those keyboard synth vibes so yeah he's not even been, he's not even really like making the, the sound, like the origin of that sound. Like, it's, it really is lifted out of the 70s or 80s, you know.

Yeah, more producing than, than actually recording his own stuff. Yeah. At least early on. They're kind of like, yeah, remixing or repurposing, you know? Yeah. But he also, like, has a really unique voice. I mean, it's, you know, it's not really a much of a singing voice, but it's the way that he, like the slight re-referenced.

verb on it and all that stuff is really what makes it memorable i think i mean honestly like his music is is the kind where like i would i'd want to hear the instrumental version of this album you know because his yeah his music is great with or without his voice you know yeah there's just something about his music his music is definitely it kind of puts you in a headspace yeah at least for me that's good night nighttime you know night drive kind of music. So are we not going to play Feel It All Around? No, but we're going to play a little bit of new theory.

Okay. Because Feel It All Around is a single. Sure. I want to play New Theory. So we're going to jump to Life of Leisure, which again came out a week after High Times. So this was all stuff that he had already

had, you know. A lot of these two EPs come across, as ideas for songs. Like a lot of them just kind of end abruptly. So I think that's probably, you know, that might be why he also was super surprised at how he just blew up, you know. I don't think he was expecting it at all.

So New Theory is one of my favorite songs of his. And yeah, let's give it a listen. This is track two off of Life of Leisure. There's just something so, like, dreamy about that one. And, like, kind of hypnotic. Go ahead. I was going to say that, like, the most dreamiest of dreamy, uh, team of Paula songs, I think is, uh, Did you say Tame Impala?

Shit. I'm looking at Tame Impala tickets right now. That's why I said that. Tame Impala is coming to Dallas and I'm having a hard time believing that I can't buy like the PIT tickets right now, dude. I'm sorry. Because I don't want to be sitting in the fucking nosebleeds. Anyway, so it's the other really big song from that EP. Feel it all around.

That's like the quintessential, like dreamy, to me at least. dreamy vibe, right? Yeah. It is, I think what makes it that way. And, you know, so one of the other precursor bands, you know, that comes to my animal collective. And I think what it is is the repetitiveness of the songs, you know, it everything loops and kind of adds on top of each other. It's kind of like down tempo in that sense. but it's that mixed with like that hazy the hazy vibe with like the fuzziness of the effects

that he puts on these loops that he makes and then like the kind of washed out washed out the washed out vocals that he has yeah there's just something about it so i'm going to read a quote um from someone who interviewed him in 2010 that i really like it's kind of long but I like what he says here. And it kind of, I think it describes the feelings you get when listening to a washed-out song. He says, I first listened to Washed Out seven months ago now. Ernest Green's dream pop made sense to me at 2 a.m. in my bitter house by the sea. Winter was befitting.

So it came as a surprise when the sun started rising earlier and I was still listening. These hazy pop songs shifted in meaning. and as summer approached, I felt a cadence in the way that I listened to them. I was blown away because every song felt relevant at every moment throughout every season. Ironically, it was the clarity in these hazy compositions that struck me as so extraordinary. It just all made sense. It all made sense. So, yeah, you know, it's funny, the clip that you played of him saying,

they're like, yeah, I'm kind of confused. why people are listening to my music and talking about it and stuff. I mean, there is still sort of a, like an amateur quality to it. Yeah. But like he tapped, he, you know, he sort of tapped into the sound that, that, uh, are we, like, you know, it was one of those like perfect timing type scenarios, right? Where it's like we were just in the mood for this hypnagogic sound, you know, this like, you know, I mean, right now, especially, like, nostalgia is, is a moneymaker right now,

you know? Oh, yeah. Big time. Absolutely. With shows like stranger things and stuff. I mean, of course, this was like almost a decade earlier. But, like, this was when, you know, that kind of thing started, you know. Yeah.

Our generation, like, we're the adults now, you know, in the world. Right. We're making all the shows. We're making all the music. We're all about it, man. But like you were saying It was just Well yeah

Just because it's so easy to do that You know Right Go on YouTube You can watch three hours of 90s commercials If you want Yeah exactly It's nuts dude

Nuddy But yeah like you were saying It was kind of just the right Just perfect timing Chaz Bundick Who is the Who is Toro Imwa He says

He felt that Chill Wave Did its thing And once it became a thing, people stopped caring about it. Even the artists making it. So especially when you listen to old versus new Toro and moi, his sound evolved a lot. Oh, yeah. He's pretty, he has a pretty wide range.

I mean, it's mostly, I mean, he did, he sort of borrowed from an unknown mortal orchestra and did like a jazz, like a jazz concept type album. Dude, my favorite album of his, he teamed up with these twins. They go, they're the Matson twins. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's exactly the album I'm talking about. I fucking love that album.

Yeah, it's kind of like more experimental and whatnot. Yeah, yeah, more psychedelic. Yeah, I think I, I don't know if we kept this in the episode or not, but I was talking about how when I think of Chill Wave, it's washed out, and it's Toro Imwa because they both came out around the same time. But I think Toro Imua is the more like, I guess, successful of the two, it seems like. I think, yeah, I agree. But I think that's just because he's been able to evolve.

Yeah, he's, his sound. Yeah, he's willing to go different places. Have you listened to any of his new stuff, watched out, any of his new new stuff? because I had. I listened to a few songs from his latest album, which is called Mr. Mello. It came out two years ago. Yeah, that's kind of,

he's almost making fun of it himself, you know, in a way like Mr. Mello. There's some weird songs on there. It's different. But he's definitely still there. You know, like it's still his sound. He hasn't really. evolved too much. But no, so let's jump to the next song because this one might be my

second favorite of of Life of Leisure. There's a really awesome bass line on this song. So this is track 5 on the record. Life of Leisure, it is called Lately. Yeah, I've always really liked the bass line in that song. Like, he did a great job with that. Yeah. And I wonder if that's, you know, I mean, he said he was just messing around on his laptop. So I guess that's a synthesizer or whatever that's making that bass sound. Yeah.

That's a good, you know, good sounding bass, you know, in that respect. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he said, you know, really all he had was, again, like his recording software, guitar and keyboard when you started out. Let's jump to within and without. This one came out on our birthday, brother, in 2011. And this was his first, again, his first full length that came out on subpop. There's some great songs on this album as well. and this he started working with musicians in this one so there's violin in some of the songs

really good stuff I think I feel like within and without is earnest green and you know washed out fully realized we're going to do track five on this one it's called far away that's interesting the string the string sound that he sampled in there so that's not a sample that's that is hether mackintosh okay there's there's quite a lot of musicians uh on this album he's got a bass player it's got someone actually playing drums for one of the songs uh he has another vocalist on one of them as well so yeah um yeah he just kind of so i think part of it was he wanted to be able to recreate his music live, you know, and do that more effectively. So he, you know, he didn't want to just continue to have what felt like DJ sets where he was just

standing in front of his laptop on stage, you know, so he brought in other musicians to help, help him do his live shows. And that's kind of how he evolved. I feel like that's probably similar to how Tyco was, too, you know? Yeah, sure. So, hmm, I'm going to play another song, dude. I don't have one lined up but sure we're kind of moving moving right along here there's another really great

song on within and without that I really like it's way more mellow let me just pull up my Spotify and we'll get going on that all right so this is another song off of within and without it's called soft

great song I love the dancey, you know, repetitive drumbeat and I like that bass line. Yeah, that sounded more like upbeat than most of his stuff, you know. Yeah. Can I say something that might be unpopular here? Go for it. I'm not really a fan of his voice. You're probably not alone in that, dude.

And maybe that's why I like Toro Imoa a little bit better. But, yeah, I just feel like he, um, I don't think he really has a good singing voice, and that's why he layers on those effects, you know. But what I like about it is that he's being true to himself. You know, he wants to sing. Okay. Sure.

So he sings. Yeah, I know. That's fine. That's fine. I mean, that's, sure. But I'm just saying, like, like, I tune into his music, like, to hear the melodies and stuff that he does. Yeah. But, yeah, anyway.

I just feel like it hits his voice and, like, the way he does his vocals is pretty, like, one note, I guess. I don't know. Like, it's very the same. That might be what kind of kept him back from being able to evolve. I mean, because, like you said, he puts these effects on his voice, and that's what washed out is. he can't you know he's kind of limited to to what else he can do yeah but you know what you know stop don't sing you know that's the thing it's like he he does a great he does great uh music great melodies and whatnot you don't have to sing but hey you like you said dude you know

what he's doing what he wants to do yep if he wants to sing he's gonna sing but anyway so that's watched out that's chill wave let's say we're wrapping up brother so what's on the what's on the Horizon. What's our next full-length album? Let me bust out the Minutes. Toots. Okay, so do you want to do Underworld?

Yes, dude. Fuck. Yeah. Cool. They were kind of a, like a, they're probably French, I don't know. Dance, like disco dance kind of club.

like house music. Yeah, I'm very interested to see kind of what their origin story is and and maybe dig into that scene, whatever scene they were part of, you know? Yeah. So yeah, so we're kind of sticking to the dance vibe. So as always, you can hop us, hop us out. As always, hop on our website, no filler podcast.com. There we've got show notes and we've got players for all of our episodes.

You can stream us on SoundCloud directly from our website. Peruse the show notes and all that fun stuff. You can find us on any podcast streaming app we should be up on there. And so for our outro, I had read somewhere that, that, Panda Bear's album from 2007 person pitch is credited with launching the Chill Wave style. So Panda Bear, Noah Lennox, he's one of the members of Animal Collective. And it's that ambient, repetitive melodies, you know, that is dominant in his album person pitch. I think it's an album we should definitely cover at some point.

So we're going to outro us out with the opening track on that album. Let's do it. Which is a song called Comfy in Nautica. All right. So until next time, thank you as always for listening. My name is Quentin. My name is Travis. Take care.