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**Washed Out - Life of Leisure**
★★★★☆

In the sweltering summer of 2009, while indie kids were still recovering from the synth-pop revival and electronic music was fracturing into a thousand micro-genres, Ernest Greene was holed up in his parents' house in small-town Georgia, crafting what would become one of the most influential EPs of the decade. Working with little more than a cheap sampler, some vintage synthesizers, and an abundance of reverb, the then-graduate student accidentally birthed an entire musical movement. That seven-track collection, "Life of Leisure," didn't just introduce the world to Washed Out—it practically invented chillwave.

Before Greene became the poster child for hazy, nostalgic electronica, he was just another twenty-something with a psychology degree and too much time on his hands. The story goes that he started making music as a creative outlet while studying library science, uploading tracks to his MySpace page under the moniker Washed Out. The name itself perfectly encapsulates the project's aesthetic: everything sounds like it's been left in the sun too long, colors faded but somehow more beautiful for their imperfection.

"Life of Leisure" is chillwave distilled to its purest essence—a dreamy, lo-fi confection that sounds like summer memories filtered through a VHS tape that's been played one too many times. Greene's approach was deceptively simple: take elements of 1980s new wave and synth-pop, slow them down, douse them in reverb, and bury them under layers of analog hiss. The result was music that felt simultaneously futuristic and deeply nostalgic, like a transmission from a parallel universe where the Reagan era never ended but everything moved in slow motion.

The EP's crown jewel is undoubtedly "Feel It All Around," a hypnotic slice of synthetic bliss that became the theme song for the comedy series "Portlandia." With its burbling bassline, ethereal vocals, and irresistibly catchy melody, the track perfectly captures that feeling of lazy Sunday mornings and endless summer afternoons. It's the kind of song that makes you want to lie on your bedroom floor and stare at the ceiling for hours. "New Theory" follows closely behind, its warped vocals and dreamy synthesizers creating an atmosphere so thick you could swim in it. Meanwhile, "You'll See It" showcases Greene's ability to craft genuine emotion from the most artificial of sounds, its melancholic beauty proving that drum machines and vintage synths can be just as affecting as any guitar or piano.

The influence of "Life of Leisure" cannot be overstated. Along with contemporaries like Neon Indian and Memory Tapes, Washed Out helped define chillwave as more than just a Pitchfork buzzword—it was a genuine aesthetic movement that captured the zeitgeist of the late 2000s internet culture. The EP's success led to a record deal with Sub Pop and opened the floodgates for countless bedroom producers armed with nothing but laptops and a love for 1980s nostalgia.

Greene followed up this breakthrough with 2011's full-length "Within and Without," which expanded the Washed Out sound with live instrumentation and cleaner production. While it lacked some of the raw charm of "Life of Leisure," it proved that the project could evolve beyond its lo-fi origins. Subsequent albums like "Paracosm" and "Purple Noon" have seen Greene continue to refine his craft, incorporating elements of ambient music, new age, and even yacht rock into his increasingly sophisticated compositions.

More than a decade later, "Life of Leisure" remains a time capsule of a very specific moment in internet culture and independent music. It's the sound of a generation raised on MTV and video games coming to terms with adulthood, using technology to recreate the warm fuzziness of childhood memories. While chillwave as a movement may have peaked years ago, the EP's influence can still be heard in everything from mainstream pop to underground electronic music.

Greene has never quite recaptured the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of those early recordings, but perhaps that's beside the point. "Life of Leisure" exists as a perfect artifact of its time—seven tracks of pure, unfiltered nostalgia that continue to soundtrack lazy afternoons and late-night drives. In our increasingly chaotic world, sometimes we all need to get a little washed out.