Within and Without
Washed Out
A couple years ago, the term Chillwave got coined to describe the mix of electronic and 80’s music that was gaining in popularity even as it was released in spurts—as EP’s, singles, cassettes. Washed Out was hailed as one of the luminaries of the new movement, which might as well have flipped Queen on its head and plastered their albums with the label: “Only Synthesizers.”

Washed Out is Atlanta-based Ernest Greene and this, his first full-length player, follows a series of EPs he’s crafted on his laptop over the past two years and released with often very limited circulation. Greene largely describes his music on those EPs as “a four-bar loop of a drum sample” with “layers of synthesizers” on top, but Within and Without has him collaborating with producer Ben Allen (Gnarls Barkley, Animal Collective) and flirting with live instrumentation. Not that there’s been any seismic shift. The base point of Within and Without remains the same: Driving pseudo-club beats pushing forward a cloud of echoed vocals and dreamy, floating synthesizers. This is what you must agree to love in order to stand any chance with the album.

After that, it’s the little details and fleeting moments that make all the difference. Take the vital drum fills all over “Eyes be Closed” and at 3:29 of “Amor Fati,” or the straight-piano line at the beginning of “Within and Without,” which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Wu-Tang song. In these cases, live instrumentation does the job. But really, on an album with such a homogeneous sound at its core, the difference maker is anything that jumps out of the mix and grabs your attention. A small detail, such as the vocal sample on “Before,” is often all that elevates and distinguishes a song on Within and Without.

Which makes for an uneven release. At its best, Within and Without mixes the euphoric with the atmospheric, cutting from a previously uniform verse-chorus-verse to a raise-me-to-the-heavens crescendo bridge. At its low points, which start appearing halfway through, the unvaryingly echoed and distant vocals have you begging for any change of pace. Within and Without goes a long way to show that care and production-values can take Chillwave to new heights. But it’s certainly no apex. The genre has lasted longer than many would have guessed and there’s still time to see who, if anyone, will take it to the top of the mountain.