The Quiet, Unspeakable Joy of Mallsoft

I’m a lousy shopper. In my mind, shopping entails fulfilling a need and moving on with your life. Want the latest Jordans? You go to Foot Locker, buy the said Jordans and now you own Jordans. You walk out and resume your life with killer kicks in your feet. Consumerism is straightforward and utilitarian to me. I take joy in the result, but none whatsoever in the process. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t like the mall. Because I love (or loved) the shit out of that place.

I might be terrible at shopping, but I’m great at being at the mall. There’s a difference. Malls are impersonal spaces. They weren’t created to please anyone. They were created not to displease anyone. Every visitor wanders around with a purpose in mind, ignoring one another and basking in mindless convenience. It’s not a fun place, but it’s not a hostile place by any means. They’re meant to make your trip, smooth and easygoing so that you want to visit again.

Now, malls aren’t the places of communal consumerism they used to be. Technology, online shopping and COVID-19 have rendered them obsolete, deserted and somewhat dangerous. On the internet, algorithms tailor everything to your specific tastes. News, movies, music, the frequency to which you hear about certain friends. It’s another form of convenience that is infinitely more lonely than the mall, but there’s not real going back. Well, that’s not 100% true. There’s a way to get there.

That way is through the musical journey of mallsoft.

Liminal spaces of the mind

What is mallsoft? It’s a microgenre of electronic music and a subgenre of vaporwave, kind of like black metal is a subgenre of heavy metal. It’s a derivate of easy listening, lounge music or smooth jazz that is slowed down and slathered in reverb in order to give it a haunted feeling. Many artists also like to add the chatter of crowds to mimic the experience of actually being at the mall. The best way I can describe it is having the mall inside your heart.

Now, why would you want that? The mall is a liminal space. Somewhere that exists for the benefit of no one in particular. It’s a place where you’re not supposed to stay. A place you pass through on your way to where you’re meant to be. It’s an oddly relaxing place. There’s a familiarity and a flatness in expectation that makes it easygoing. It’s somewhere you can only exist without anything being ever asked out of you, except perhaps shell out a few dollars here and there.

It’s degree zero of capitalism.

Now, vaporwave in itself is a commentary on consumerism. It uses old commercials, promotional imagery and corporate music in order to evoke certain feelings. The only difference with mallsoft is that it gave it a place. It’s not always the mall too. It takes the concept of liminal spaces to its consumerist extreme and uses a lot of old school ambient television music in order to evoke different shades of nostalgia. The artist that summons this nostalgia best is 猫 シ Corp.

The best example of that is his album News at 11, which has for concept that time stopped right before the planes hits the towers on September 11, 2001. The peacefull stillness of the 90s goes on forever. The album plays clips from television broadcast and daytime television music from that day. Music that is not meant to enrapture anyone. Merely to fill dead air. It’s music that exists for the soul purpose of not accompanying images with silence. It just exists.

The culture of mallsoft

I’m still relatively new to the mallsoft scene, so I can’t pain a complete picture of the scene even if it’s still quite underground. I don’t think haunted elevator music is ever going to get big, though. It’s not emotional enough. It’s a quiet trip like the pleasant thoughts you force into your head in bed while trying to sleep. It represents a joyful apathy. A moment where nothing personal is expected of you. Where you can just exist (or not). No one cares what you do there.

Outside of 猫 シ Corp., great mallsoft acts are m a l i b l u e, 식료품groceries, 沢NaN, Lindsheaven Virtual Plaza and countless others that keep popping up every week on Bandcamp. You can’t really go wrong skipping from one artist to another, because you’re chasing a particular, wordless feeling and that feelings evokved by mallsoft artists differ with every individual experience. Some of it you’ll feel, some of it you won’t. There’s no bad answer. There is only the mall.

I love listening to mallsoft because it bring me back to that time of my life where I stayed up at night and watched television. Nothing important ever airs after 11 PM. It’s all late night shows, old movies, reruns, paid advertising and real esoteric stuff. Programming that’ll make you unsure whether or not you’re dreaming. I used to love it. It made me feel home. Part of a (not so) secret society of people who watched television when television stations didn’t care.

Mallsoft is more than just music. It’s nostalgia for an era that is not only gone, but that will never ever come back. It’s like a dead person or a ghost. All we have to celebrate it is our memory. It’s neither good nor bad. It works if it’s a conduit to that era of your life where the weather was on television and not on your phone, so someone had to write music in order to go along with it. Mallsoft is the disembodies ghost of time that disappear. That is why we’ll always need it.