I don’t enjoy ambient music, so the best I ever did in that regard was M83’s beloved second album, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (2003). But even that record is more an orchestral score than it is homage to Music for Airports. Maybe indie pop has spoiled me, but I can’t enjoy something unless it has a beat. Chillwave, a genre determined to induce the same impromptu daydreaming as ambient (but with an ‘80s tape deck feel), seemed to solve this problem: I could be swept away by cheerful sonics and hooks – possibly driven by a synthesizer riff as opposed to a vocal – whilst hip-hop inspired drum machines loosely kept my attention. Ernest Greene (Washed Out) is responsible for the popularization of this sound, and 2009’s “Feel It All Around” is a major reason why. I don’t like referring to music as hypnotic, but that song seemed to sync up with the rate of my brainwaves, leaving me in a slowed down trance of focus. (And yes, that is the legitimate cause of that disorienting feeling you may occasionally experience when listening to music or watching a movie.) 

     Greene’s long-awaited debut (after two singles and three EPs), titled Within and Without, comes as no surprise; the looping daze “You and I” even appears, previously featured on the Adult Swim singles project over a year ago. However, the big issue here isn’t a more of the same feeling, but rather that an entire album is spread across Greene’s all-too-content songwriting process: Reverbed vocals that sustain, sustain, sustain, but never change or differ, shimmering but quiet keyboard rhythms with accompanying waves of ambiance, and drums that generally expose the likely source of the recording/mixing—an iMac. Within and Without sticks to Chillwave pure, rarely adding anything new the way of Toro y Moi’s Underneath the Pine in terms of varying musical styles. Chillwave should feel and sound synthetic to an extent (as that’s sort of the point behind it), but not manufactured.   

     “Eyes Be Closed” is a copy of “Feel It All Around” minus the enthusiasm, whereas “Echoes” is too subdued; there are intricate sounds about, and an interesting synergy between those sounds, but it’s far too quiet. “Amor Fati” literally jolts the record, like two fingers snapped right in front of your face, and Greene sounds almost too confident against the sunlit bliss. (Expect to be quite familiar with “Amor Fati” by the end of the year, as the potential for film and commercial placement is astronomical.) “Soft” gets me into that trance again, but that’s just the BPM. The song itself is dull, and the title is an apt description. 

     Throughout Within and Without, I was hoping for Greene to deviate from his formula, to make a record more than fitting room background music for an Urban Outfitters, but it never happened. I wanted one or two songs without the reverbed vocal, without the pretentious soars that make you forget what’s important—is it his vocal (the plural is not appropriate here given the lack of variety), or is it the instrumentation? To the album’s credit, “A Dedication” came really close to what I was looking for after eight songs. And yeah, “You and I” is just as good now as it was a year ago, and seems to have been remastered, but it isn’t enough. Instead of embracing the wide awake sunlight of “Amor Fati”, Within and Without mostly induces those five minute naps on the train where your head slowly lowers to your chest before snapping right back up.