Chillwave is a good thing. Fuck it’s a great thing. Kimmypants would disagree with me, calling it a made up word. It is a made up word, but it’s a word that, like I said to her last night, was a term coined by the fine folk who enjoy this visiting to the past. It’s stripping everything down, taking it back in time to a more simplistic, basic time. Back to before even the C86 was cool.
It’s all casios, all tape hiss, all made up beats and noises. AND it’s so damn catchy. The 20-somethings making this music, like my much beloved Washed Out, are releasing them only on vinyl and cassette tapes. HOW COOL IS THAT!? And of course, they’re released digitally, too, because they know most people just listen to MP3s anymore.
Anyway, today I share with you Small Black. Members of this band actually work at Pitchfork - can’t wait to read that unbiased review! [Here’s what they said about the song “Despicable Dogs”] They just go signed Jagjaguwar; they have a 5-song EP that is just fucking delectable. They’re touring with - big surprise - Washed Out! This is my most eagerly anticipated show of the year so far. It’s so immediate, opening with a simple drum loop before the horizon is expanded to show this beautiful palette of noise. All while this drum loop just goes on and on. And the chorus is anti-anthemic; and I say anti-anthemic because it is anthemic but since there’s that whole ethos of being stripped back and lo-fi, it’s the opposite. Except not. And when they start singing, you can just imagine them being in a music video involving them walking down the sidewalks of Brooklyn, a la Saturday Night Fever, and there’d be smoke machines and dogs.
Enough reading, listen.
Download: “Despicable Dogs” [MP3]
