I came up with a half-baked theory the other day that chillwave is really a response to global warming anxiety.
― didn't even have to use my akai (Hurting 2), Friday, 5 August 2011 03:47 (twelve years ago) link
Intense longing for some past (illusory) wholeness is the very stuff that pop built its castle out of.
Best thing about chillwave = its essential warbly formlessness/hooklessness. Its like the nostalgia cycle producing music more & more deformed, as if the base genetic material that nostalgia has to draw from is getting thinner and thinner. Points towards the innate incestuousness of the whole endeavour...
― lacanthrope (Drugs A. Money), Friday, 5 August 2011 03:52 (twelve years ago) link
see i definitely GET the appeal of the 20 year nostalgia cycle. I grew up watching Gen X jack off all over their Quisp cereal boxes and whatever and for sure have an appreciation of recontextualizing the junk of your youth. I love those Missy songs built on quirked-out 80s nostalgiajams; one of my favorite bands is Zombi who is basically a fake version of 70s Italian horroe movies.
But both Missy and Zombi are in love with a TEXT, not the vague feeling of nostalgia itself. Chillwave is the first artistic form I've ever encountered where the goal is to CREATE nostalgia as opposed to nostalgia being a happy by-product of an recycling/recontectualizing of ideas.
I think its really dishonest coming from a generation who's already overloaded with websites like RetroJunk and X-Entertainment; with TV shows like VH1's I Love The 80s; with more unrestricted access to ACTUAL music and video artifacts than any generation before.
― james blood ulver (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 5 August 2011 03:55 (twelve years ago) link
something really depressing about a scene with people so young so steeped in wistful nostalgia.
I'm struggling to see how it's any different than the '60s folk revival, blues revival, yardbirds, beatles, stones, dylan, punk rock, hip hop, or most of the other interesting movements in pop music over the past 50 years.
― lizard tails, a self-regenerating food source for survival (wk), Friday, 5 August 2011 04:00 (twelve years ago) link
Chillwave is the first artistic form I've ever encountered where the goal is to CREATE nostalgia as opposed to nostalgia being a happy by-product of an recycling/recontectualizing of ideas.
not really getting the distinction, but I don't think it makes sense to think of chillwave as an "artistic form" so much as a bunch of people ripping off Ariel Pink.
― lizard tails, a self-regenerating food source for survival (wk), Friday, 5 August 2011 04:01 (twelve years ago) link
lol last year i wrote a long post about how 'chillwave' was essential a genre that exists as an expression of generational anxiety...
whiney i kinda think u dont 'get it' the point emphatically is not to create nostalgia but to confront it... i always thought this post from plax was p good @ getting @ what i mean:
i get what yr saying and i agree w/ u to a large extent except for "the fact that it's the past isn't particularly relevant" I like the bit about nothing being written onto a tabula rasa. instead there is a landscape strewn with shards of pop culture. social networking sites where people communicate emotion via youtube clips from old tv shows. The present is stitched together from the discarded remnants of the past. its kinda like walter benjamin and the angelus novus, the trash heap of history.
I love lamps line abt "how hard it is to feel things." I feel like this taps into the core of chillwaves disconnection. It's emotional music about not feeling anything. Its is simultan. anesthetised and yearning for a romanticised *past*. When I say past though I don't necc. mean a personal history, but an *idea* of the past. It is both idealised as a moment where you could feel something (i feel like this is always lyrically clear in lyrical motifs like teenagers, highschool, beaches, summer camp even the idea of summer and its fleeting temporality) and also like you said a kind of common language that people speak through now.
its like that andy warhol line abt how emotions always seem more real in movies. This seems to me to be the source of chillwaves nostalgia: not for a time *before* teen movies and youtube but for the source of those ~feelings~; smthng we can only barely piece together now.
also heres something i wrote about this:
thinking a lot about the way difficult times bring out the sense of foreboding & anxiety & that what ogmor's talking abt - the obv techno-historical dead end, trying to reconcile the past/present through art - is there but i wonder too abt the 'animal spirit' of the times & if that makes it seem harder to find 'new' or worthwhile things to say or ways of saying
like theres a quote from miss lonelyheart's: "at college and perhaps for a year afterwards they had believed in literature, had believed in Beauty, and in personal expression as an absolute end. when they lost this belief they lost everything" which kinda haunts me & helps me see 'chillwave' as a determined attempt to avoid the bitterness & defeat of this - in an age pervasive w/ loss its looking for something to hold on to or a mode of ~being~ that reconciles now and then?
i mean i also wanted to start a new thread called 'none but nyarlathotep 2011' for this kind of music if only to escape the joke genre name but also because i was thinking abt lovecraft's "the past is real. it's all there is"
― funky house sceptics, let me draw your attention to this (Lamp), Friday, 5 August 2011 04:07 (twelve years ago) link
plax's point is pretty much the most clear-headed defense of chillwave i've ever read.
― froster the poophole (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 5 August 2011 04:14 (twelve years ago) link
having a weird nostalgia/life moment watching MTV30 where I got major nostalgia chills from seeing an old episode of Remote Control, but watched like 7 minutes of the TRL finale before I realized that I WAS IN THE FUCKING ROOM WHEN THEY TAPED IT and didnt remember half those ppl even being there.
― froster the poophole (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 5 August 2011 04:23 (twelve years ago) link
I kind of feel like if you get major nostalgia chills watching a non-musical mtv show, you have a lot of nerve criticizing other people's musical nostalgia.
― lizard tails, a self-regenerating food source for survival (wk), Friday, 5 August 2011 04:28 (twelve years ago) link
i said i got a chill watching it, i'm not going to start a fucking band around it
― froster the poophole (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 5 August 2011 04:38 (twelve years ago) link
lol, fair enough
― lizard tails, a self-regenerating food source for survival (wk), Friday, 5 August 2011 04:39 (twelve years ago) link
man, there was really some shit called "the pudding pops"??? the fuck are people doing
― J0rdan S., Friday, 5 August 2011 04:40 (twelve years ago) link
not 100% sure this is the same band but
http://cache0.bigcartel.com/product_images/31206963/POPSfront.jpg
― froster the poophole (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 5 August 2011 04:43 (twelve years ago) link
Pudding pops is punk-variety pop culture reference. Another termbo band.
― bamcquern, Friday, 5 August 2011 04:50 (twelve years ago) link
what about the "white"
― froster the poophole (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 5 August 2011 05:04 (twelve years ago) link
The Worthless VHS Idiots
― Clarke B., Friday, 5 August 2011 16:03 (twelve years ago) link
i just like lo fi reverby synth music :(
― Johnmau5 (electricsound), Thursday, August 4, 2011 8:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
― blapplebees (crüt), Friday, 5 August 2011 16:08 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.avclub.com/chicago/articles/its-true-the-band-of-horses-dude-has-a-will-smithr,59974/
― little mushroom person (abanana), Friday, 5 August 2011 23:15 (twelve years ago) link
band of horse's ass more like
― thick-necked and hateful (latebloomer), Saturday, 6 August 2011 11:54 (twelve years ago) link
The Underground Railroad to Candyland
― ducktails of captain black (sarahel), Monday, 8 August 2011 05:46 (twelve years ago) link
how did band of horses end up in the post-anco thread
― markers, Monday, 8 August 2011 05:47 (twelve years ago) link
I just got sent an EP which is (a) a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-based conceptual work and (b) on a cartridge for the 'Zhiliton' which was apparently a Super Nintendo pirate machine only available in Lithuania in the early 90s.
can any of your readers beat this?
― 'what's puzzling you' is the name of my dog (DJ Mencap), Friday, 12 August 2011 11:10 (twelve years ago) link
that is awesome
― I thought that I heard you loling, I thought that I heard you steen (crüt), Friday, 12 August 2011 11:25 (twelve years ago) link
They're just ripping off Rude Dog & The Dweebs' album 'Phenom!' which was only playable on Mario Paint
― Colin Allstations (PaulTMA), Friday, 12 August 2011 11:43 (twelve years ago) link
new CD showed up at my radio station today by The Hanna Barbarians...
― sleeve, Tuesday, 16 August 2011 00:13 (twelve years ago) link
was the artwork by this boner? Id love to have beeen in some of the crits he had during his 2 years at the RCA
http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/tag/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles/
― straightola, Tuesday, 16 August 2011 11:55 (twelve years ago) link
Could have sworn I saw a band called Com Truise opening for Neon Indian.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 16 August 2011 11:59 (twelve years ago) link
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6150/6022263442_e6db2cd19a_z.jpghttp://farm7.static.flickr.com/6146/6021707579_75f035ca90_z.jpg
Saw these at a recent art show. Actually kinda cool.
― Telephoneface (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 16 August 2011 15:11 (twelve years ago) link
discussed upthread. Com Truise is actually pretty good though.
― dmr, Tuesday, 16 August 2011 15:27 (twelve years ago) link
the hannah-barbera reference is not 80s ephemera so much as general 'vintage' nostalgia, seems more like a 90s band name than anything
and yeah, com truise has grown on me lately (still much prefer ford + lopatin tho)
― a lagoon par la mer (psychgawsple), Tuesday, 16 August 2011 17:13 (twelve years ago) link
Reptar
http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/91/l_78831749441c4c488aef8372b08f3589.jpg
― corey, Saturday, 20 August 2011 01:45 (twelve years ago) link
ah, reptar
would totally smash dude on our right, but their music is pretty much like foster the people 2.1
― J0rdan S., Saturday, 20 August 2011 01:48 (twelve years ago) link
The thought if three grown men agreeing to name their band "Reptar" makes me sick to my fucking stomach
― the tuomas clown affair (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, 20 August 2011 01:58 (twelve years ago) link
there's one press photo where dude is dressed up like a teletubby
― J0rdan S., Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:00 (twelve years ago) link
http://flagpole.com/images/jpgs/2011/06/01/Threats-Reptar_b.jpg
hey, remember teletubbies?
― J0rdan S., Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:01 (twelve years ago) link
what a fucking terrible band name
― markers, Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:01 (twelve years ago) link
i also have interesting opinions on rap music
and an orange beard
what's the dude in the gold suit dressed up as
― J0rdan S., Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:02 (twelve years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/ZILM6.jpg
― markers, Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:05 (twelve years ago) link
would you say that it was "reptarded?"
― sarahel, Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:05 (twelve years ago) link
man
― J0rdan S., Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:06 (twelve years ago) link
just got it, the dude is wearing a c3po costume
― markers, Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:07 (twelve years ago) link
hence the cables that kind of look like the cover to the loon
― markers, Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:08 (twelve years ago) link
is the dude holding a big fish to remind us all of "big mouth billy bass" or w/e
― J0rdan S., Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:09 (twelve years ago) link
like if the bandmembers referred to themselves as reptards, and their music as reptarded, i think it would be funny
― sarahel, Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:14 (twelve years ago) link
The last one is kind of poetic in it's tragedy
I don't think you're looking hard enough
― Colin Allstations (PaulTMA), Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:15 (twelve years ago) link
I want to go back in time and hire some bullies to pound on them because they clearly did not get their asses kicked enough in school
― the tuomas clown affair (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, 20 August 2011 02:28 (twelve years ago) link
All those band pictures look like Pianosaurus.
― Matt M., Saturday, 20 August 2011 04:07 (twelve years ago) link
File under "indefensible."
BUT ARE THEY CHILLWAVE?
Apparently they're on tour with Foster The People.
― Badmotorfinger Debate Club (MFB), Saturday, 20 August 2011 06:55 (twelve years ago) link