Mallsoft (also known as mallwave) is a
vaporwave
Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, visual art style, and Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator music, elevator, contemporary ...
subgenre themed after retro shopping malls.
Overview
![Palm Mall ( 猫 シ Corp](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Palm_Mall_%28_%E7%8C%AB_%E3%82%B7_Corp.%29.jpg)
Often based on corporate
lounge music
Lounge music is a type of easy listening music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place, usually with a tranquil theme, such as a jungle, an island paradise or outer space. The rang ...
, it is meant to conjure images of shopping malls, grocery stores, lobbies, and other places of public commerce. Mallsoft artists typically elicit nostalgic memories of these retail establishments, even to those who did not experience them, firsthand through
easy listening
Easy listening (including mood music) is a popular music genre and radio format that was most popular during the 1950s to 1970s. It is related to middle-of-the-road (MOR) music and encompasses instrumental recordings of standards, hit songs, n ...
,
bossa nova
Bossa nova () is a style of samba developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is mainly characterized by a "different beat" that altered the harmonies with the introduction of unconventional chords and an innovativ ...
, and
smooth jazz
Smooth jazz is a genre of commercially-oriented crossover jazz and easy listening music that became dominant in the mid 1970s to the early 1990s.
History
Smooth jazz is a commercially oriented, crossover jazz which came to prominence in the 19 ...
music while providing commentary on consumerism and
corporate capitalism
In social science and economics, corporate capitalism is a capitalist marketplace characterized by the dominance of hierarchical and bureaucratic corporations.
Overview
A large proportion of the economy of the United States and its labour marke ...
. Much of the enjoyment from listeners is derived from nostalgia and the "pleasure of remembering for the sake of the act of remembering itself".
Characteristics
Some artists simply take existing 1980s' pop songs, slow them down, and add reverb as if to make it sound like it's coming from the overhead speakers in an empty or abandoned mall.
Reverb and distortion is often overlaid on top of a track to give it an isolating and disorienting feeling.
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
videos are also made to pair mallsoft tracks with images of malls with an emphasis on selected images that appear to have been taken from the 1980s and 1990s.
The visuals can often be meant to invoke a sense of loneliness along with the cold nature of meandering through overly-corporate mercantile environments.
Reception
Music journalist Simon Chandler described
Cat System Corp.
Jornt Elzinga (born 1989), commonly known as , is a Dutch musician regarded as a vaporwave musician that originated the mallsoft subgenre. He also previously recorded as Mesektet for his dark ambient releases.
Born in 1989, Elzinga started his ...
's 2014 album ''Palm Mall'' as being "perhaps the definitive mallsoft album".
See also
*
Ambient music
Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It may lack net composition, beat, or structured melody.The Ambient Century by Mark Prendergast, Bloomsbury, London, 2003. It u ...
*
Postmodern architecture
Postmodern architecture is a style or movement which emerged in the 1960s as a reaction against the austerity, formality, and lack of variety of modern architecture, particularly in the international style advocated by Philip Johnson and Henry- ...
*
Dead mall
A dead mall (also known as a ghost mall, zombie mall, or abandoned mall) is a shopping mall with a high vacancy rate or a low consumer traffic level, or that is deteriorating in some manner.
Many malls in North America are considered "dead ...
References
{{Electronica
21st-century music genres
Neologisms
Microgenres
2010s in music
2020s in music
Nostalgia
Shopping malls
Vaporwave