The Chillsynth Primer

A brief history of the microgenre and a Top 10 of classic albums

I want you to listen to this track.

Just press play – and read on while listening.

Sit back, relax, and give it some time to develop. Wait until the drums come in at the 44 second mark. Don’t skip there – just let it build and breathe. Try to immerse yourself in the mellow, dreamy atmosphere it creates.

To me, it feels like watching a glorious sundown in front of your cabin after a long hike in the mountains. Your body is aching terribly and you’re all exhausted, but it was all worth it in the end.

I love the combination of that warm, reverb-drenched Minimoog and the crisp, thumping drums. It’s that ambiguous mix of beauty and melancholy – like the moment when you’re looking out of a train window, a gorgeous landscape flies by and you know you’ll never set foot on it.

It might sound unspectacular at first, but believe me, it’s extremely addictive. Those 162 million views speak volumes, don’t they?

When I first heard “Resonance”, I thought it sounded like Com Truise on promethazine, or a bedroom producer version of Awake-era Tycho.

Those artists are usually affiliated with the synthwave/retrowave and chillwave genres.

But while the atmosphere resembles chillwave, it’s an instrumental tune and doesn’t follow the compositional structure of a pop song. And while the sound aesthetic is similar to retrowave with its nostalgic 80s vibe, it doesn’t sound like a caricature – it’s not that over the top. Most of all, at 85 BPM, it’s just much slower than most of your standard synthwave fare.

For some time, this particular style was described as ‘lo-fi synthwave’ or ‘lo-fi retrowave’ – and that’s what most outsiders are still calling it. But the people who are actually making and listening to this kind of music, they’ve decided some years ago to start calling it chillsynth.

images: St.Cliche

“Resonance”, the reference track for this relatively new microgenre, was created by the virtually unknown underground producer HOME when he was just 17. The track was included on his debut album Odyssey, which saw a release in June 2014 as a free download via the vaporwave label Midwest Collective. The young man from Florida, whose real name is Randy Goffe, has said in interviews that he was influenced by acts like Boards of Canada, Neon Indian, LCD Soundsystem and Beach House.

You can definitely find musical progenitors for his sound in the synthwave scene, such as the producers Abelard (“Teen Optimism”, 2013) and AIRGLOW (Memory Bank, 2014). But it was “Resonance” that blew up on the internet in the second half of the 2010s, inspiring and motivating teenage bedroom producers all around the globe to start making music on their PCs.

How it happened was that in late 2015 and early 2016, a viral trend called “Simpsonwave” bubbled up on social media. Users were basically just setting clips from The Simpsons cartoons to contemporary synthwave and vaporwave tracks, and then sharing those clips around. One popular clip was set to “Resonance”, and while it had been out for a year and a half at this point, the tune suddenly seemed to connect with a new audience. Kids listened to it on the YouTube channel Electronic Gems, where it soon racked up over a hundred million views.

But while that song went through the roof, HOME didn’t follow up with new music in this style. He’d already ventured off into other directions with his subsequent work, leaving a gap for other young bedroom producers to fill. Many of them didn’t have much knowledge in music theory or previous production experience. They often began by reverse-engineering “Resonance”. Digital audio workstations made it possible to produce decent similar tracks using virtual instruments and plug-ins relatively quickly. Independent digital service providers gave them the opportunity to upload their self-produced music to streaming services.

In 2017, the anonymous producer yu-utsu (憂鬱) released his formative tune “Sun”, putting his own spin on HOME’s characteristic sound. As was the case with “Resonance”, the YouTube channel Electronic Gems acted as a multiplicator for the song. One of the most liked comments on “Sun” says: “POV: You're trying to remain in the feelings of nostalgia after listening to HOME's resonance.” The artist made his mark on the burgeoning chillsynth scene with his album 憂鬱 (Melancholy), released in 2018 via Midwest Collective, but just like HOME, he would drop off the radar soon after. Both haven’t released any new material since 2020.

In the years 2018/19, producers like Admo, Hotel Pools, oDDling, Memorex Memories, Voyage, A.L.I.S.O.N, Emil Rottmayer, Unfound, BVSMV or Forhill started making music in a similar style inspired by HOME and yu-utsu (憂鬱), at the same time expanding on their ideas. Finding modest success, they turned ‘lo-fi synthwave’ into a global niche electronic music community. Independent labels like Midwest Collective, Stratford Ct. and Eye Witness were serving it with new releases.

The young subgenre still didn’t have its own name though – it was Admo who came up with the ‘chillsynth’ term while looking for a potential label name, but then decided to use it for a Discord server. Just like HOME and yu-utsu (憂鬱), Admo has since retreated from the scene, but that server still exists and remains its most important networking and promotion hub.

In November 2020, the music editor Andrew Zistler published an article in the online magazine NewRetroWave: “Meet the Latest Synth Micro Genre: ChillSynth”. Even until today, it’s remained the only longer form piece of music journalism about the scene. In the piece, Zistler pinpoints the year 2018 as the moment when the sound turned from a short-lived social media trend into “a full fledged microgenre standing all on its own.”

At the time, chillsynth was already a growing community. Since then, the sound might not have exactly exploded in popularity, but it has definitely evolved further since the pandemic, and the online scene remains very close-knit. Aside from the Chillsynth Discord, there are two main YouTube channels that keep driving the culture forward: The aforementioned Electronic Gems (639k subscribers) and Definition of Chill (30k subscribers), who are posting a new single release every day. The prolific Californian label Girlfriend Records follows a similar strategy of providing a constant stream of releases, acting as a gateway into the sound and the scene for many.

I spoke to Axl Rhodes, a German chillsynth producer and co-founder of the Stereoscape label, which is based between San Diego/US and Dresden/Germany. He tells me that over the last couple of years, the young genre has been shedding its lo-fi roots. The production value, so he claims, has become much more high quality, with a “third generation” of producers currently making waves in the community: Moire Lights, Drozax or Snakez stand for a coherent but somewhat traditional, Minimoog-driven sound; he also mentions the works of Zane Alexander and youth83, and he credits Memorex Memories – at this point a veteran of the scene – for the constant expansion of the chillsynth idea, especially with his more experimental demo tracks released on his SoundCloud.

As a first introduction to the microgenre, Axl Rhodes has been kind enough to run a mini-survey on his label Discord, coming up with a representative list of ten classic albums from the second half of the 2010s. The first four of these records, he tells me, were unanimous decisions among the participants. While there was definitely a bit of discussion about the rest and everyone had slightly different album favorites, most in the community still mentioned the same producer names.

I’ve been immersing myself in this music for the last couple of weeks, and as a long-time listener of ambient, downtempo and electronic music, I am starting to see a certain line of lineage starting in the late 1990s, going from the dreamy, nostalgic downtempo IDM of Boards Of Canada and Ulrich Schnauss to the early synthwave/chillwave of Tycho and Com Truise, and from there to HOME and the gradual formation of the chillsynth movement. On a purely musical level, chillsynth rather feels like a contemporary update of an existing style and tradition than an entirely new subgenre.

So, I am hearing you asking, dear reader – did we then really need a new genre term for this? Isn’t this music just a niche variant of the wider synthwave/retrowave/outrun/chillwave movement (which, frankly, already has more than enough synonyms and subgenres)?

That’s probably right, but the community is trying to make a point of actively establishing the #chillsynth tag on platforms to distinguish itself from other subgenres within that wider sphere of retro electronic music. That’s totally understandable, as there’s an actual scene of producers and listeners that has gathered around a particular form of cultural practice throughout the last ten years. Just lumping it in with the wider synthwave/retrowave movement probably doesn’t do this scene justice – and using chillwave as a descriptor even feels misguided. So why not be a bit more specific?

The music itself, of course, is great regardless of whatever Bandcamp tags people might choose to employ. To put it bluntly, chillsynth is just beautiful instrumental electronic music – shaped by warm, resonant retro synths, crisp downtempo beats and a melancholic yet hopeful, uplifting atmosphere.

Does this sound like something you could be interested in?

10 Classic Chillsynth Albums

1. HOME – Odyssey (Midwest Collective, 2014 / Eye Witness, 2016)

2. yu-utsu (憂鬱) – 憂鬱 (Midwest Collective, 2018)

3. Hotel Pools – Fall ‘18 (Stratford Ct., 2018)

4. A.L.I.S.O.N – Space Station (Eye Witness, 2018)

5. Emil Rottmayer – Descend (Eye Witness, 2018)

6. Forhill – Figments (Stratford Ct., 2019)

7. Memorex Memories – Pictures of Purple Skies (Stratford Ct., 2019)

8. Hello Meteor – The Glowing: Final Cut (2017) / Causality Violations (2017)

9. Unfound – Horizon (Stratford Ct., 2019)

10. Florida Skyline¹ – The Green Tapes (Midwest Collective, 2019)

Honorable mentions

• Windows96² – Enchanted Instrumentals & Whispers (2019)

• oDDling – One EP (2019)

• Admo – Atlantic Drift EP (2019)

• Eagle Eyed Tiger – On the Run (2019)

• FUJII – natural.減衰 (2020)

Soon-to-be classics

• Hypixi !!! – Quarter Vision (2022)

• Memorex Memories – In Motion I&II (2022)

• Voyage – Second Light (2023)

• A.L.I.S.O.N, VIQ, Krosia – Trifecta (2023)

• Krosia – Dunes (2024)

Huge thanks to Axl Rhodes and the Stereoscape Records Discord community!

1. Florida Skyline was a chillsynth producer from Moscow who passed away in 2019, around the release of this album, shortly before her 18th birthday. May she rest in peace!

2. Windows96 is a Brazilian synthwave and vaporwave legend, but this specific album is considered a classic of the chillsynth genre.