n. A quiet period after a party; a post-rave gathering that features slow music and a calming ambience; soothing, hypnotic music.
2002
Like so many pop trends, "chillout" started as one thing and ended up quite another.
In the beginning, the term was used by rave aficionados for the soft and airy records they played after a long, mind-altering night of dancing. At early-morning "after-parties," friends would recover from the hard beats of electronica (and the disorienting effects of Ecstasy) with the quiet balm of ambient music.
Who would have thought a term coined for such an underground and illicit ritual would one day morph into a TV-driven, mass-market phenomenon? At the moment, scores of "chillout" albums clog record racks, each sporting a sanitized twist on the form and its own lifestyle-enhancing promise.
In the beginning, the term was used by rave aficionados for the soft and airy records they played after a long, mind-altering night of dancing. At early-morning "after-parties," friends would recover from the hard beats of electronica (and the disorienting effects of Ecstasy) with the quiet balm of ambient music.
Who would have thought a term coined for such an underground and illicit ritual would one day morph into a TV-driven, mass-market phenomenon? At the moment, scores of "chillout" albums clog record racks, each sporting a sanitized twist on the form and its own lifestyle-enhancing promise.
1990 (earliest)
Konspiracy Very funky club run by the posse who used to operate the Kitchen, Manchester's late-night watering hole. Sat is the day: all four rooms are open and the club is firing; the Jam MCs, the main DJs; Spice, ambient DJs, provide a chill-out room.
The verb chill out, meaning "to calm down; to relax," entered the slang lexicon in the early 1980s, but is by now relatively mainstream. (Older non-hipsters mostly use it ironically.) In the 90s, chillout morphed into both a noun (see the first citation) and an adjective (see the earliest citation).