Chill out music (sometimes also chillout, chill-out, or simply chill) is an umbrella term for several styles of electronic music characterized by their mellow style and mid-tempo beats — "chill" being derived from a slang injunction to "relax." Chill out music emerged in the early and mid-1990s in "chill rooms" at dance clubs, where relaxing music was played to allow dancers a chance to "chill out" from the more emphatic and fast-tempo music played on the main dance floor. This genre is synonymous with the more recently popularized terms "Smooth Electronica" and "Soft Techno" and is a loose genre of music blurring into several other very distinct styles of electronic music.
