Although most artists who have been pigeonholed as "chillwave" by music critics or fans have been trying to avoid and rid themselves of that title due to the ever-growing negative stigma it gained shortly after its birth a few years back, Vancouver's twenty-something producer Luke Hartie, who records as iamforest, proudly dubs his beat-driven ambient electronic project as just that, "chillwave". If you're not aware of what chillwave is, some of the leading pioneers include Neon Indian, Toro Y Moi, and Washed Out.
I wondered why Hartie didn't care to throw his project into that cringe-worthy (to some) genre so easily until I thought, "Maybe it's because he knows that chillwave is only really a dismissed genre title because of the gigantic wave of wannabe laptop musicians that flooded the interwebs with cookie cutter beach-ready, fuzzed out, and sample-driven tracks when the aforementioned artists met success." Luke Hartie is different from these "artists" and he knows it. His idea of chillwave is obviously, and thankfully, and bit unconventional.
While still very "chill", Hartie's music as iamforest isn't typically sample-or-fuzz-heavy, has more hard-hitting beats, incorporates his own airy vocals and smooth guitar work, and he has over ten years' experience making music with a degree in sound engineering to top it off, so unlike most of his chillwave counterparts, he knows what he's doing. If this is what chillwave has become, I won't be too quick to drop the word from my lexicon.
Listen to his outstanding single "Structures" and a song from his recent Driven Out EP, "Versions", below and buy all his music on a pay-what-you-want basis over at his Bandcamp page.
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