What Did Chillwave Mean, Anyway?
20.05.12
Through Gorilla Vs Bear’s fondness for Polaroids to the current Williamsburgian predilection for waxed moustaches and expensively retro boat shoes.
But as with your silly facial hair and sailor tattoos, the key point here is that this is an imagined nostalgia, a yearning for a past that never existed. Some musicians have taken this idea of an imagined past and played with or subverted it — take Ariel Pink’s early work, for instance, which deliberately set out to sound like it may have been recorded off a cheap transistor radio at some point during the 1970s. A more recent example is Royal Headache, whose self-titled debut album shares a similar sense of faux-vintage production. (It’s getting released here next month — it was widely hailed as the album of the year in the band’s native Australia last year, and you’ll doubtless be hearing more about it shortly.)
Source: Flavorwire