This evening I tuned into a new radio station called Chill. Apparently the music I make belongs to the chill-out sub-genre. And apparently this accidental “movement” is now big enough to be a genre in itself. I am accidentally fashionable—or rather I am accidentally a few years behind the curve, because it’s mainstream now.

The radio station called Chill has no DJs, no news, no travel announcements, and the records go unnamed, but I recognised the Orb’s Little Fluffy Clouds. It features the voice of Rickie Lee Jones—not that she was entirely happy to have a snippet of an interview with her sampled into the track. There is a page in the marvellous everything2 where you can find out some other curious things about the record. The interviewer’s voice belongs to LeVar Burton who played Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Every sound on the recording is a sample. There’s some Pat Metheny guitar on it. It’s actually an “ambient” (ambient techno) track, but now the mighty superset of chill has subsumed it.

One day all music will be chill. Except for the output of these guys, which will be trip-hop.