Paste Magazine June/July 2010 : Page 79
KELE DANGER MOUSE AND SPARKLEHORSE NEW M U S I C SOAPBOX CHILLWAVE OF MUTILATION Hipster Runoff blogger Carles in a July 2009 post about the band Washed Out. Struggling to name the still-nascent nü-synth movement the band is ostensibly a part of, Carles' other ideas included “ZanyCore,” “Pitchforkwavegaze” and “Music 2 smoke weed 2.” But "Chillwave" stuck, and was soon repeated enough times in enough far-flung corners of the Internet, and eventually in print, for it to be completely stripped of its original irony. So what the hell is Chillwave? The music that gets slapped with C this dubious title is something of a call-to-arms for slacker-types and rising Millenials. It lazes in nostalgia for the kitsch of the '80s and '90s, while paradoxically embarking on a justifiably earnest search for musical authenticity. “[L]ike something playing in the background of an old VHS cassette that you found in your attic from the late ’80s/ early ’90s,” Carles wrote, Chillwave artists take the dreamy, space-cadet pop of those decades (schmaltz and all) and reconfigure it for modern audiences. If it’s melodic and hazy with pseudo-profound lyrics reverb’d to 11, it’s Chillwave. Chillwave's so-called heavies include the likes of Ariel Pink, Neon Indian, Toro y Moi and Memory Tapes, all of which have a few shared elements (like 808 drum machines and synths of Super Nintendo quality) but they’re more dissimilar than alike. Memory Tapes are by all accounts a French-electro throwback and Toro y Moi holds court with M83 in shoegaze purgatory; meanwhile, Washed Out flies its freak flag under the Balearic Beat sub-genre. But even Chillwave's would-be figureheads are wary of the term. Before a recent show at The Earl in Atlanta, Chazwick Bundick—the creative force behind Toro y Moi—admitted, “This music hasn’t been around long enough to merit a name yet. I listened to a shit-ton of disco, J Dilla and My Bloody Valentine in college. I’m just picking up where others left off.” If the genre's own alleged practitioners can't agree on matters of substance, it's an even bet whether Chillwave's house of Casios will survive these growing pains and become a mansion on a hill, or just buckle under its own weight. For now, as Bundick smirks, “It's basically a meaningless term.” MICHAEL SABA hillwave is a nebulous descriptor, which might explain why the genre has no real identity. It’s the Seinfeld of musical genres, a bizarre case of art imitating life and vice-versa, satire run amuck. The term was originally coined by skewer-happy kind of electro album: the sort that can be appreciated just as much from the couch as the club. SARA LIBBY 7.1 DANGER MOUSE AND SPARKLEHORSE Dark Night of the Soul EMI RELEASE DATE: JULY 13 Tragedy-shrouded instant classic escapes lawyers’ clutches KELE The Boxer GLASSNOTE MUSIC RELEASE DATE: JUNE 21 Takes a few blows, but wins in round two Boxers are studies in contrast: brutish but graceful, quick but endur-ing. With his first solo album, Bloc Party front-man Kele Okereke reveals similar juxtapositions, his feathery falsettos duking it out with the discordant electro beats. He makes a strong declaration of independence in the opener, “Walk Tall,” where he roars over a ferocious synth saw, “Cut your ties to the past and wave it goodbye.” The second track seeks to sever his indie-rock ties altogether, with his pitch manipu-lated into a high squeak and layered over old-school breaks. But while The Boxer is many things its namesake suggests— brash, fearless—it’s clumsy and confusing at times, too. The dispa-rate elements tend to compete with each other, leading to the paranoid seizure of tracks like “All the Things I Could Never Say,” on which Okereke assumes the role of a preacher, with results too bizarre to be revelatory. Still, his earnestness shines through, and in shaking off his rock bag-gage, he’s made the best Recorded in 2009 as part of a multimedia project devised by Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse (née Mark Linkous) and film-maker David Lynch,Dark Night of the Soul was shelved for more than a year as EMI and Danger Mouse proprietor Brian Burton resolved legal dif-ferences that still haven't been fully disclosed. The controversy nearly ob-scured the resounding tri-umph of the album itself; written and produced by Burton and Linkous, it's a breathtaking set of at-mospheric ballads (plus a few rockers) that explore cosmic concerns, from the self-destructive trap of revenge to the possibil-ity of spiritual renewal. Danger Mouse’s spooky signature sound—a mix of shimmering keyboards, fuzzy echo and squiggly ambient noises—provides a mesmerizing backdrop for guest vocalists includ-ing Iggy Pop (the roaring “Pain”), the Shins’ James Mercer (the Beatlesque “Insane Lullaby”) and Lynch (the creepy title track), among others. A somber fog has always swathed the album; fol-lowing the recent deaths of Linkous and contributor Vic Chesnutt, the melan-choly is nearly un-bearable. JON YOUNG 9.0 JUNE | JULY 2010 79 !Kele photo by Sarah Piantadosi
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