No Filler Music Podcast - Rewind: Washed Out And The Chillwave Movement

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

​On this week's rewind 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. --- Visit tiestatea.com and use promo code NOFILLER15 for 15% off at checkout. A bold tea for a bold you. This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Pantheon is a proud partner of AKG by Harman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The Home Depot, how doers get more done. 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 Travis, and it's just me today. my co-host and twin brother, Quentin, is traveling for the holidays, so he was unable to join me today. And we had sort of teased an episode last week on Manman, this very eclectic group of indie rockers that, I guess, can best be described as pirate music. You know, the kind of music that you'd hear if you went below deck, you know, you climbed upon a pirate ship, And then they tossed you below deck. And this is the shanty band, you know, making some noise, right?

But anyway, yeah, this is actually the second time that we've tried to record a Man Man episode. And it just seems that it's just not meant to be. We are not meant to talk about Man Man, because it's not happening today. Last time we actually recorded a full episode and determined that it just wasn't up to snuff So we scrapped it. And yeah, once again, we're going to kick the can down the road for Manman. So we'll see if we ever circle back to them.

But anyway, what we're doing today is reaching into the episode vault and pulling out our episode on washed out. But before I tee up the episode, I want to tee up something else for you guys real quick. And that is to talk about Tiesta tea. and we are proud to partner with them right now and offer you guys 15% off at checkout. If you go to TSTATI.com and use promo code no filler 15. You can get 15% off your purchase. I can't say enough about this tea. It's some of the best I have ever had.

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All right, so like I was saying earlier, this week is a replay of our episode on Washed Out. And if you've tuned in the last few weeks, we've dropped his name quite a bit, especially on our 200th episode, where we talked about sort of the birth of chill wave and dream pop and how all the indie music blogs of the 2010s kind of were right there. when chill wave hit, including our music blog that we ran with our buddy Josh. It was called New Dust. And on the 200th episode, we sort of reminisced and talked about what it was like running a music blog back then. And, you know, what it was like to hear, Washdout's EP, Life of Leisure in 2009 when it hit and all the dime a dozen chill wave bands that followed.

But as we kind of talked about in this episode, we get into. to the birth of the chill wave sound and how Ernest Green, aka Washed Out, helped to shape that sound and how this record was sort of the starting point, the thing that kind of kicked it all off. So anyway, I'm going to cue this up. I'm going to fade us in to kind of when we start talking about it. And yeah, hope you enjoy the episode. Next week, we will kick off our year-end episodes where we count on our favorite tracks from 2021. That'll be all December long. We'll each bring five tracks each. It'll feel very much like a what-you-heard episode, which is kind of our monthly mixtape of music. But yeah, it's going to be nothing but tracks from the last year.

Those are always fun. So tune in for that. And of course, again, ts.stat.com. Promocode, no filler 15, and check out for 15% off. And of course, you can always find us on the Pantheon podcast network. That's pantheonpodcast.com, where you will find us and plenty of other great music podcasts out there. Check them out. That's pantheonpodcast.com. Okay, here we go. I'm going to fade us in to our washed out episode.

We will see you guys next week. 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 it turns out that chill wave first off it just came out of nowhere um the term and it was one of the first genres

to kind of have its movement on the internet only with like my space and whatnot band camp yeah where the popularity of 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, Corilla 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 and a very, very short time was an EP called Life of Leisure. That came out in 2009. I want to say that interview was, yeah, around 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, 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, yeah. You know, usually very hypnagogic. Even though it doesn't really mean anything, I can see where the term came from.

So actually, we can point to exactly where the term. Did somebody coined it? Like, is there a dude that coined it? Yeah. And it was just another music blogger like us. A guy that goes by the name Carl's. 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, dude. Yeah. So he said he basically was just throwing a bunch of silly names on a blog post, like 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 Waves. 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, Chill Wave 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 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, chill wave 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. Um, so there's a pretty good article on pitchfork 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. Um, 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 shoe gazey, uh, like new wave band. Um, there. singer really sounds like how earnest sings and washed out. Casino versus Japan, Bords of Canada, Arial 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 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.

Um, so another quote from, I believe this is from that pitchfork article. Uh, 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, blist-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, 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 does sound like a soundtrack to an 80s action film, you know? Yeah, I mean, it's the heavy, like, synth keyboard stuff.

Yeah, and it sounds like he's using old keyboards, you know, and like old drum machines and stuff. Yeah. That's that hypnoticogic pop, man. And it's, you know, something that's interesting. He's very similar, like the trajectory that Tycho 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 Tycho on what he's doing.

But, yeah, it was just, again, like the day. DIY bedroom 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

like there's 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 those keyboard synth vibes. So yeah, he's not even, he's not even really like making the sound, like the origin of that sound.

Like it really is lifted out of the 70s or 80s, you know? Yeah, more producing 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 much of a singing voice, but it's the way that he, like the slight. reverb on it and all that stuff is really what makes it memorable, I think.

I mean, honestly, like, his music is the kind where, like, I would, I'd want to hear the instrumental version of this album, you know, because 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 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. Which is, 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 um 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 um and yeah let's 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

Tame Impala songs, I think, is Is, uh, is, uh, Did you say Tame Impala? Shit. I'm trying, I'm looking at Tame and Pala tickets right now. That's why I said that. Tame and Pala's coming to Dallas and I'm having a hard time believing that I can't buy, like the pit tickets right now, dude.

Hmm. I'm sorry. Because I don't want to, I don't want to be sitting in the, in the fucking nosebleeds. Uh, 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 yeah it is i think what makes it that way and you know so one of the other precursor bands you know that that comes to my animal collective

and i think what it is is the repetitiveness of 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 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 an amateur quality to it. Yeah. But, like, he tapped, 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 to. Yeah, exactly. It's nuts, dude. Yeah. But, yeah, like you were saying, it was kind of just the right, just perfect timing. Chaz Bundyke, 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 Imois, his sound evolved a lot. Oh yeah, I mean, 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, 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'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, man. 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, think of chill wave it's washed out and it's Toro Imwa because they both come out around the same time. But I think Toro Yuma 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 sound. Yeah, he's willing to go different places.

Have you listened to any of his new stuff washed out? any of his new new stuff? Because I had it. I listened to a few songs from his latest album, which is called Mr. Mello. Came out two years ago. Yeah, that's kind of a, 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, 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, Yeah, 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 bass, 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 sub-pop. There's some great songs on this album as well. And 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 sampled. That's, that is Heather McIntosh. Okay. There's quite a lot of musicians on this album. He's got a bass player. He's got someone actually playing drums for one of the songs. He has another vocalist on one of them as well.

So yeah. 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 lap. top on stage, you know, so he brought in other musicians to help, help him do his, his live shows, and that's kind of how he evolved. I feel like that's probably similar to how Tycho 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, yeah, 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, um,

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. Maybe that's why I like Toro Imois a little bit better. But, yeah, I just feel like he, 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. 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 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 and he can't, you know,

he's kind of limited to what else he can do. But you know what, you know what? Stop, don't sing, you know? That's the thing. It's like he does a great, he does great music,

great melodies and whatnot. You don't have to sing. But hey, like you said, dude, you know what? He's doing what he wants to do. Yep. If he wants to sing, he's going to 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 horizon? What's our next full-length album? Let me bust out the... My notes. Toots?

Okay, so do you want to do Underworld? Yes, dude. Fuck. Yeah. cool they were kind of 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 yeah so we're kind of stick in the 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 IP. any podcast streaming app, we should be up on there. And so for our outro, I had read somewhere 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, which is, 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 and Nautica. All right, so until next time, thank you as always for listening. My name is Quentin. My name is Travis. Take care.

We're dedicated to helping you build the skills that get your home projects done right. That's why we offer free and interactive online DIY workshops. During the live streams, our knowledgeable associates help you tackle your DIY projects no matter your age or skill level. You can learn how to install new single pole switches as well as standard duplex and GFCI outlets. Register for free at Home Depot.com slash workshops. The Home Depot, how doers get more done.