Do they have Mallwave parties in abandoned malls?
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You know listening to this and the other examples given…
It is like a mash of Softrock, Yachtrock and Smooth Jazz.
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Such a strange, unlikely pairing of places where things are sold with stock music you might hear in a movie theater while sitting there waiting for the lights to come down and the film to start.
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Yeah, I had to cut if off early before there was no clicking back. Endothermic art that takes more than it gives.
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I’ve literally been wanting, for years, to start a thread on this very bbs asking you all where one goes to find “good elevator music.” and if such a scene existed. I My patiemce has been rewarded. I love smooth, romantic electronic amd instrumental music.
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Just look up:
Vaporwave
or even
A E S T H E T I C
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Heck, she had Mojo Nixon’s two headed love child. That couldn’t have been easy.
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Gotta use the wide font:
ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ
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I agree… and that challenges the designations of “Mallware” and “microgenre”. The music is similar to what was heard on The Wave (94.7 FM) here on the west coast starting about 30 years ago; all its music was described as being ‘soft’, whether jazzy, pop-ish, or somewhat spacey… definitely not a microgenre. The aforementioned designation(s) seemed tacked on for attention; I don’t think it would have gotten that attention if it was simply advertised as “80s/90s” elevator music (something I have no issues with at all). It would be interesting to see the history of so-called Mallware for its origins; as a descriptor, “Mallware” could genuinely work perfectly (as far as nostalgia) for some people – such the composers, and for others by sheer happenstance. That all said, I still find the sound and concept interesting.
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I’m with you, though you seem interested in something more contemporary and electronic. But when I hear these styles of music now and how ‘in’ it is I think “kid, I was listening to “chill” before you were born; and believe me, the cool kids all thought it sucked hard.”
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I’ve often wondered how childhoods impact conservative views. I hear and read so many conservatives who base their worldviews entirely on lived experience, including their childhoods, without any self-awareness about it. So they see the period of time that coincided with their childhoods as being innocent, uncomplicated times where no one had any problems or worries because for them it was true, because they were goddamn children.
So combined with beliefs in prelapsarian mythologies (and probably stories of parents and grandparents who also fell into the above trap), there’s this general sense that things used to be better, even before their own childhoods, based on… nothing in particular. So we have conservatives like Tucker Carlson idealizing the decades before their births, rhapsodizing about the economy then, while also recoiling in horror from any actual economic policy from that era.
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I’m a fan of vaporwave stuff in general, but I hope younger folks aren’t confusing it with the reality of what the 1980s were like. Vaporwave definitely evokes a very particular mood (your mileage may vary), nostalgic but also sad, wistful and maybe a little dark and ominous. I feel like it’s a good fit for old mall footage, but only because so many malls have shut down and it’s essentially a funereal soundtrack for a phantom place that now exists only in memory (or imagination, for those who weren’t born yet). It’s not anywhere close to the same feeling as having actually visited a mall, any more than visiting someone’s grave is the same feeling as having a conversation with them during their life.
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One of those malls is still going strong.
I recognize many of those segments ( Pirate ship, waterpark, putting course, at least one of the rollercoaster clips and some other ride clips ) as West Edmonton Mall in Alberta Canada. It was the largest mall in the world for almost a decade in the mid 80’s and is still going strong. The long cold winter has something to do with that… and as you see it’s much more than a mall.
YES! This a 100 times.
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I don’t know about genre wide but if you don’t already listen to Eric Malmberg that’s my favorite. But I like the moog side of things (less on the smooth jazz sounds) but I like the fact that it reminds me of some music people were dancing to in a Polanski film I saw once but was never able to find.
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there’s no such thing as “mallwave” - it’s vaporwave, it’s even called that in the title of the video
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I’ve got Plantasia (youtube rip) on heavy rotation.
But then again, I am also known to bomp “Breezin”
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OK, the world keeps gettin’ weirder. Haven’t heard of - or had that earworm - in decades, then last night I find out this is happening in my town:
https://electric.theatre/shows/tiffany-pieces-tour-return/
Then this post comes up.
Guess where I’ll be on Monday, because… why not!!!
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I deeply wish this article could be corrected. As someone who has steeped themselves in this genre over the past year, I have never heard it as “Mallwave” - only “Mallsoft”, as a sub-classification of the many branches within Vaporwave.
Also, the notion that the article didn’t mention the works of 猫 シ Corp. is unfortunate in many ways. The album Palm Mall is one of the best examples for exposure to the genre, and BoingBoing’ers could easily latch onto the futurism-tinged nostalgia within its sequel, Palm Mall Mars. Ambient recordings from the 50th year of a mall terraformed on Mars?! Which still sounds like 90’s, yet not? I mean, how could an article not run with such a fun concept?
The video that inspired PMM speaks for itself: https://vimeo.com/226116678
Palm Mall Mars album: https://catsystemcorp.bandcamp.com/album/palm-mall-mars
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