Mallsoft

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Mallsoft (also known as mallwave) is a vaporwave subgenre centered around shopping malls. [1]

Contents

Overview

Album cover of Palm Mall by Cat System Corp. Illustrations such as these are often used as artwork for mallsoft music. Palm Mall ( Mao shi Corp.).jpg
Album cover of Palm Mall by Cat System Corp. Illustrations such as these are often used as artwork for mallsoft music.

Often based on corporate lounge music, mallsoft is meant to conjure images of shopping malls, grocery stores, lobbies and other places of public commerce. [2] Mallsoft artists typically elicit nostalgic memories of these retail establishments, even to those who did not experience them firsthand, [3] sampling easy listening, bossa nova and smooth jazz music. The music can also include intermittent advertisements, as well as the sounds of footsteps, conversations, and air conditioning. [4] Much of the listening enjoyment is derived from nostalgia and the "pleasure of remembering for the sake of the act of remembering itself". [5]

Characteristics

Some artists simply slow down and reverberate 1980s pop songs to make them sound as if emanating from the overhead speakers in an empty or abandoned mall. [6] Reverb and distortion are often overlaid on top of tracks to give them an isolating and disorienting feeling. [6] YouTube videos often pair mallsoft tracks with images of malls, with an emphasis on selected photographs that appear to have been produced in the 1980s and 1990s. [6] [7] The visuals often invoke a sense of loneliness along with the cold nature of meandering through overly corporate mercantile environments. [8]

Reception

Music journalist Simon Chandler described Dutch artist Cat System Corp.'s 2014 album Palm Mall as being "perhaps the definitive mallsoft album". [9]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Vaporwave, the Millennial legacy of Daniel Lopatin". Revista cultural el Hype. 2020-02-21. Archived from the original on 2021-11-09. Retrieved 2021-11-09.
  2. ↑ "Mallsoft is the New Elevator Music | Indie88". 23 September 2015. Archived from the original on 2021-05-04. Retrieved 2021-05-04.
  3. ↑ "The Teens Who Listen to 'Mallwave' Are Nostalgic for an Experience They've Never Had". MEL Magazine. 2019-01-30. Archived from the original on 2021-04-23. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  4. ↑ "Micro Genre Within a Micro Genre That Uses Ambience as an Instrument: Learn About Mallsoft". www.ultimate-guitar.com. Archived from the original on 2021-07-09. Retrieved 2021-07-04.
  5. ↑ Glitsos, Laura (January 2018). "Vaporwave, or music optimised for abandoned malls". Popular Music. 37 (1): 100–118. doi: 10.1017/S0261143017000599 . ISSN   0261-1430. S2CID   165274914.
  6. 1 2 3 Ballam-Cross, Paul (2021-03-01). "Reconstructed Nostalgia: Aesthetic Commonalities and Self-Soothing in Chillwave, Synthwave, and Vaporwave". Journal of Popular Music Studies. 33 (1): 70–93. doi: 10.1525/jpms.2021.33.1.70 . ISSN   1533-1598.
  7. ↑ "Macross 82-99's 'Sailorwave' Should Be Every Retro Anime Fan's Soundtrack on CBR". 5 October 2020. Archived from the original on 2022-05-14. Retrieved 2022-06-05.
  8. ↑ "Genre As Method: The Vaporwave Family Tree, From Eccojams to Hardvapour". Bandcamp Daily. 2016-11-21. Archived from the original on 2021-05-07. Retrieved 2021-05-04.
  9. ↑ "The Mall, Nostalgia, and the Loss of Innocence: An Interview With 猫 シ Corp". Bandcamp Daily. 2017-03-08. Archived from the original on 2021-05-16. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
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