Ask Tovah #5

Maxing Your Chillaxing

What happened to proper chill out rooms? These were a feature of my early raving days in the mid-00s, but seem to be a thing of the past. Has the price of throwing multiroom parties just made a quiet(er) space uneconomic or do some people prefer to, you know, dance?

Ambient rooms (aka chill out rooms) were super common when I started going to parties in the mid 90s as well. And even though my battery operated spirit animal is an Energizer Bunny whose natural habitat is the dancefloor, I’ve parked my a*s in these rooms oodles of times, often losing track of time and space.

Though it’s true most parties and clubs no longer have ambient rooms, some promoters have made it a cornerstone of their programming. Looking for more? Go to the parties that have them and then follow artists to clock what gigs they’re booked at in the future. I’ve been seeing an increasing number of parties where ambient music is the main event, or perhaps the only music featured. And some of those parties pay extra attention to the visuals and design of the space creating a beautifully immersive cocoon of an experience that’s distinct onto itself.

Just what is ambient music anyways? In my early days, I classified it as the minimal 90’s sound that soothed me during an acid trip gone awry or embraced my pill induced warm and fuzzies. That is until I started hearing more and more music played in chill out rooms that didn’t fall neatly in that category. I’m certainly no authority on genres, but I find it very odd that the term is often used as a one-size fits all description of sounds you lounge to. And on the flip side dance music has a gazillion, some seemingly superfluous genres (to be discussed another day). Limiting our descriptive language for such diverse music is a disservice to our understanding and experiences with it.