Take a Chillwave Pill

Librarian — it’s a profession far more complex than the Dewey Decimal System. And for Ernest Greene, it was an overwhelmingly competitive field to find work. Naturally, he turned to chillwave. After earning a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of South Carolina and struggling to...

By Victor Gonzalez

May 10, 2012

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Librarian — it’s a profession far more complex than the Dewey Decimal System. And for Ernest Greene, it was an overwhelmingly competitive field to find work. Naturally, he turned to chillwave. After earning a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of South Carolina and struggling to find steady employment, Greene moved back into his family’s home in Perry, Georgia, and began producing music from his bedroom. He took on the moniker Washed Out and created a MySpace page. The rest is history — or, in library-speak, located under 781, general principles and musical forms. It was the summer of 2009, and independent music’s chillwave was just catching on. Like many of his peers, Greene took a DIY approach to his craft and perfected a brand of dreamy, lo-fi synthpop. He seemingly caught every relevant music blog’s attention that year and landed on Pitchfork’s Top 100 Tracks list at an impressive number ten with his infectious summer anthem, “Feel It All Around.” A few months later, he was explaining chillwave to the Wall Street Journal. “It generally has an ’80s influence,” he told the paper, “which is definitely pretty heavy in my stuff.”
Mon., May 14, 7:30 p.m., 2012

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