Is Sidechain Compression the new Autotune?

Feels like we’re all on the tail end of this big autotune kick, no? What was once merely a tool used for subtle (and sometimes less subtle) studio trickery at some point became the favored flourish of major hip-hop artists and sincere folkies alike. It’s been inescapable for years now—sometimes the autotune use was self-aware (more often, however, it wasn’t), and there was a surplus of hi-larious autotuned web junk.

Subtract the mainstream FM-dial oversaturation, and you have the same exact circumstances which surround the recent explosion of sidechain compression in blogworld buzz acts. Sidechain compression, in layman’s terms, is a method by which parts of a given song are ducked around a drum hit, effectively warping the sound, creating a “sucking,” washy quality. Sidechaining is all over Toro Y Moi’s stuff, not to mention the majority of so-called chillwave acts, from Neon Indian to Teen Daze. I’ve been detecting more and more of it lately, and—as with autotune—there’s no shortage of ballsy artists willing to take the effect about as far as they can, sidechaining their tracks until they’re nothing but a big, washy pulse.