10. Droid Bishop – “End Game”

9. Yota – “The Vibe”

8. Clyde Shelton – “Spending Spirit”

7. The Midnight – “America Online”

6. W O L F C L U B – “Electrify”

5. TOKYO ROSE – “TYRAEL”

4. Florida Skyline – “Hello World”

3. Com Truise – “Galactic Melt”

2. Waveshaper – “CRT Days”

1. DEADLIFE – “Strands Unravel”

Honorable Mentions:

A.L.I.S.O.N – “Lightyears”

Voyage –  “Sync”

Dan Terminus – “Requiem”

Baldocaster – “Map to the Stars (Part 1)”

View our other Best of 2020 lists here!

Like our lists? Check out our Top 10’s from previous years:

Top 10 Retrowave Songs of 2019
Top Ten Retrowave Songs of 2018
Best of 2019 

Top 10 Synthwave Tracks of 2020

The Gothenburg Synthwaver takes us on a night cruise through a majestic technopolis.

Listen to The Disk Hunter

9. Powernerd – Destroy to Create

Powernerd suits up in chrome battlegear and delivers an action-packed EDM-meets-Synthwave EP full of electrifying basslines and punchy beats.

Listen to Destroy to Create

8. Sierra – All About Love

Sierra’s existential angst reaches meets new depths of violence, lust and depravity.

Listen to All About Love

7. Gress –  MMXX

Pure industrial dark synth Armaggedon made in Russia. The soundtrack to your neighbour’s moving out.

Listen to MMXX 

6. Nightstop – Stalking Danger

Night driving music full of scintillating synths and funky beats. Old tropes shine anew through brilliant execution.

Listen to Stalking Danger

5. Makeup and Vanity Set – Tesseract

The masked Synthlord teams up with cyberpunk artist Liam Wong for a short trip down the murky back-alleys of NeoTokyo.

Listen to Tesseract

4. Florida Skyline – Machinekore. (Demos)

A collection of tracks by a young prodigy from Russia, who tragically passed last December.
Blending Vaporwave, Synthwave and EDM, Sophia’s posthumous demo EP is an unrivalled display of sophistication and raw talent.

RIP Sophia

Note:  100% of proceeds collected from Florida Skyline’s Bandcamp are donated to Transgender Equality Related Organisations.

Listen to Machinekore. (Demos)

3. Mitch Murder – Artifact

A fantastic set of leftover tracks from the Swedish producers’ Cyberpunk 2077 sessions, compiled into an EP. Perfect to fuel up your shootouts across Night City.

Listen to Artifact

2. STRNGR – Bumping Uglies

A filthy couple of dark electro tracks by Cincinnati’s bloodthirsty STRNGR.
For those who like their Synthwave black and unsweetened.

Listen to Bumping Uglies

1. Sellorekt/LA Dreams – Back at the Office

A brilliant throwback to Office life in the 80s’ at the crossroads between Synthwave and Vaporwave.

Listen to Back at the Office

List Compiled with help from Andrew Zistler.

Way back in 2015 I had just left college, moved to Cleveland, and started writing about synth music… it was kind of like that Hannibal Buress sketch from the Eric Andre show. Equally as surreal, right around that time the microgenre simpsonwave was blowing up and became a whole thing.

Of all the many simpsonwave videos, one of them stood out to me. The music it contained wasn’t your average synthwave or vaporwave track, and it was amazing. It was labelled #chillwave – but that seemed off to me. I had listened to a LOT of chillwave, having experienced the dreamy “Summer of Chillwave” firsthand – and this didn’t really sound like chillwave I knew.

I shrugged it off. People throw labels around all the time, and, in truth – this fantastic track didn’t really sound like synthwave either. Looking back, I now believe this track – Resonance from HOME – was the very beginning of a new microgenre of synth music altogether.

HOME’s music was truly one of a kind. It’s a dreamy sound, still retro but without being on-the-nose like a lot of synthwave. Always chill. People more versed in music theory than I have even created video essays on why Resonance sounds so damn good.

The Evolution

Then, after dropping just a couple albums and EP’s between 2014 and 2017, HOME remained relatively silent in the coming years. Fast forward to 2018. As I’m scouring the internet for new music to write about, I keep hearing that sound. I even write about it a little bit. The HOME sound. But now, other artists are whittling it down, carving out their own unique niche within the framework of chilled out synth music —
— and they’re all calling it chillsynth.

Now there’s even a chillsynth Spotify playlist, Discord server, and Website. There’s also a YouTube channel filled with chillsynth over at Electronic Gems. Somebody went and made a (very short) essentials image over on Reddit. At this point, I figured this is much larger than a passing trend – it’s become a full-fledged micro genre standing all on its own – and the article you’re reading now began to take shape.

Chillsynth delineates itself from synthwave in that it is almost always much more down-tempo, lo-fi, and features lush synth pads with a lot of sustain, reverb, or resonance – hence the title of the HOME track above. The effect is to create a dreamy, relaxed, almost floating sound. While elements of nostalgia still come into play, it tends to be much less on-the-nose than synthwave or outrun which continually pays homage to the 80s. With chillsynth, we see (and hear) many references to the 90s as well. It’s still nostalgia-based music, although not really fully in the 80s box.

It’s not quite chillwave either. Chillwave also features a lot of reverb too, however as a genre it is centered around a lo-fi pop sound, whereas chillsynth is centered more around a dreamy lo-fi synthwave sound. Though both chillwave and chillsynth contain similar elements, a quick listen to a few tracks side-by-side quickly reveal vastly different compositional elements, and results in a vastly different end-product. I believe many originally called this style chillwave because of those similarities and the fact that at the time, we simply lacked a different genre name to describe it – that seems to be no longer the case.

Below is a short, non-inclusive list of some of the major players. This is not an all-inclusive list, so don’t get mad at me.

HOME
ADMO
A.L.I.S.O.N
Hotel Pools
oDDling
Unfound
Memorex Memories
Voyage
BVSMV
Florida Skyline (RIP)

Now, I’ve seen other music bloggers try to “coin a genre” or “announce a genre” before, and it’s always gone very poorly, most often resulting in the author getting hilariously dragged on social media. Understandably, I didn’t want to do that for this article. In fact, the genre has already seemingly been named by the artists themselves. So, instead I reached out to three of the larger labelheads releasing chillsynth music – Andrew W. of Stratford Ct., Nat S. of Midwest Collective, and Alex F/Tyler V of Eyewitness Records – to let them do the talking for me.

Note: Each of these labels deserve their own entire article. They spoke to me for over two hours each on the phone, and answered many of my personal questions about running a label to boot. Sadly, to keep this article somewhat short and readable, we can’t separately promo each one. Suffice to say they all deserve a good listen, and you can do so here: Stratford Court / Midwest Collective / Eyewitness Records (Formerly Known as Dream Girl Records)

But Don’t Take it From Me…

One of the things they all agreed upon in my interviews is that the sound started with HOME. Before exploding into internet popularity via simpsonwave videos, HOME was relatively underground, appearing on a few compilations before releasing full albums – and he was the only one with that sound.

“It all started as a Soundcloud thing…It’s pretty silly…[Home] was someone I found on Soundcloud initially with only a few hundred followers, and really fantastic music. So I reached out to him and said, “Do you want to put a song on this Compilation I’m pulling together?” and he did.” – Nat S.

“I think a lot of it does have to do with HOME. He definitely paved the way for many of these guys, I think because of how big he blew up. I don’t really know what all these artists were doing before that. HOME has done tracks for our compilations since the beginning and back then there wasn’t really many other artists that sounded like him.” – Andrew W.

“Some synthwave tracks had chill elements at that time, but it wasn’t really until I heard HOME’s Odyssey that there was a whole album of this new sound. It didn’t have any of the standard characteristic synthwave gated reverb 80’s drums, or other synth sounds people associate with synthwave stuff.” – Tyler V.

After Simpsonwave blew up HOME, it took other artists a few years before many started reverse engineering the HOME sound. Some of my interviewees even speculated it was the lack of new HOME releases coupled with the fact that people were craving that sound (Myself included) that lead new artists to start making it. But, not too long after they did, the sound began to evolve into something new.

“It kind of had a lag effect. People didn’t start making similar music until a year or two afterwards. When they did me and my friend, like, jokingly called them “Home Clones” because it’s like, “oh, this is this is like literally that sound.” Nat said. “But I want to be clear, what people are doing now is not a simple clone. It’s sort of folded in on itself, and created a new genre continuing that particular nostalgia – and it’s awesome.” – Nat S.

“Some synthwave tracks had chill elements at that time, but it wasn’t really until I heard HOME’s Oddessey that there was a whole album of this new sound. It didn’t have any of the standard characteristic synthwave gated reverb 80’s drums, or other synth sounds people associate with synthwave stuff. ” – Tyler V

That specific evolution is something we’ve seen before – in vaporwave and synthwave. The main genre starts, and then begins breaking off into small subsections like vaportrap or darksynth – some of which even become AS popular or more so than the original genre. Right now, it seems, we’re beginning to drive into that inflection point with chillsynth. It’s amazing how similar my separate interviewees opinions were on this.

“I think chillsynth is having a very similar progression to how vaporwave evolved.

You know, vaporwave started around 2010-12, with classic albums like Macintosh Plus’s Floral Shoppe and Chuck Person’s Eccojams, and pretty quickly there was a vaporwave “Sound.” On the surface, it was an easy sound to make – take a deep cut from a Diana Ross album and slow it down, chop it up a little bit. It was easy to emulate. Then, in the next coming years newer artists expanded on that sound. Artists like 2814 made vaporwave that was all synth and no samples – and Saint Pepsi added drums to samples that were only slowed  down a bit. Those were still “vaporwave,” sure – but the newer artists were starting to really explore and do their own thing.

The same is true for chillsynth right now.  Artists like Home built an initial platform of relaxed nostalgic retrosynth that was pretty easy to replicate. There are tons of soundcloud artists recreating those sounds right now.” – Alex F

But we’re quickly moving into the time period where there are a large amount of chillsynth artists who are replicating that sound with their own spin. You have artists like Admo and A.L.I.S.O.N, and Emil Rottmeyer who are adding their own things to make it unique.  There developing their own “sound” within the framework of chillsynth.” – Alex F

“I think more recently we’ve seen a large increase in the amount of people making this style, starting around 2017. It’s hard to say how big it’ll grow. Just seeing what vaporwave has done …Chillsynth is definitely a huge and booming micro genre now. It’s interesting to see, because I feel like when it was first developing, (and I’m sure it’s still in it’s beginning stages) everyone sounded pretty similar, but, you know, in the past few years many of the artists are starting to kind of carve out their own place inside of that. The sound has a base – but it’s already diverging.” – Andrew W

Regardless of whether or not you consider chillsynth a full-fledged micro genre, a subgenre of synthwave or chillwave, or just a passing trend, it seems as though the chillsynth community is growing fast — and it’s certainly a niche to watch. It might experience a boom and bust just like vaporwave or chillwave, but whatever it way it goes you should really listen to and explore it because, well – it’s just truly great music.

“It’s a genre that wear’s its heart on its sleeve, it’s personal. That’s why people are becoming attached to the genre – it hits really hard emotionally in a cathartic or nostalgic way. I think that’s what’s driven people to want to make this sound.”
– Tyler V

 

Peter Zimmermann – Through The Night (Part 1)

Florida Skyline – The Green Tapes

Arcade High – New Impressions

Megadrive – 199XAD

Billy Mays Band – Introspection

Betamaxxx – Lost In A Dreamworld

Powerglove – Playback

Top 10 Retrowave Albums of 2019

10. Lucy in disguise – Sunset Radio

9. FM Attack – New World

8. Tonebox – Cloud Highway

7. Futurecop! – Voltrana

6. Akuma II – Alex & Tokyo Rose

5. Com Truise – Persuasion System

4. Waveshaper – Artifact

3. Quixotic – Flamingo Drive In

2. Michael Oakley – Introspect

1. Ollie Wride – Thanks in Advance

Honorable Mentions:

Brojak

Douze

Top 10 Retrowave Newcomers of 2019

10. Marsilius Kreutz

9. Vast Hill

8. Autokira

7. Lukhash

6. Florida Skyline

5. Siamese youth

4. SJ Bravo

3. Wayfloe

2. Yota

1. The Night Hour

A relative newcomer, Florida Skyline’s first releases came just a few years ago. We first found her through Midwest Collective’s release of her astounding “The Green Tapes” just earlier this year.

At only 17 years old, her production skills and music were inspiring, and well beyond her time. Her signature sound was a mixture chillsynth reminiscent of Com Truise, Tycho, and Home.

Lazerpunk stated in a facebook post, “…She was just a teenager, and she was already creating beautiful music, with a soul, with substance, and I’m at a loss of words now, really, just listen to it. She had a great future in front of her, and I don’t just think, I know she could have grown up to be one of the greatest producers of our times.”

I highly recommend listening to her music:
Florida Skyline Bandcamp
Florida Skyline Soundcloud

“Signal Flow” is especially extraordinary when you realize that the  A.L.I.S.O.N sound will be turning just two years old later this month –  and has yet to release their first full length album! They do, however, have several fantastic EP’s and demo-tapes under the belt – with another track “Take Off” being particularly face-meltingly fantastic.

A.L.I.S.O.N’s other releases vary in sound a bit, but a fantastic distilled essence of chillsynth remains throughout, rising above other “Memewave” counterparts in not only production but also execution. Don’t miss this one if you’re a fan of HOME, Emil Rottmayer, or Tycho. Like this sound? Check out Florida Skyline or ADMO!

Download A.L.I.S.O.N – Signal Flow Here!

Florida Skyline is incredibly reminiscent of HOME’s work (of simpsonwave meme fame) – featuring chilled-out low-fi synthwave sounds with just a hint of vaporwave for good measure. In spite of sounding very similar to HOME, Florida Skyline also manages to remain independently creative and brings her own unique sound to the table. “The Green Tapes” is, in short, an instant classic. If you’re a fan of HOME you will absolutely love this.

It’s worth noting her previous releases – “Anesthesia,” and the Com Truise-esque “Utopian EP” are equally fantastic. These releases are certainly derivative of HOME and Com Truise’s work – however they lay the foundations for something truly great.  You can list on one hand other artists who stormed into the scene with such perfectly produced gusto.

Check out the album here!