I can't wait until online shopping becomes nostalgic.

This is why I love Vaporwave, it can be nostalgic and reminiscent but it's portrayed in a psychedelic, dreamy, sometimes eerie yet ironic sense. It can exciting and enthusiastic to represent our happier moments, where we laugh, celebre, create, etc., it can ambient and soothing to represent relaxing moments where we dream about where we are heading, but it can warped and distorted like our saddest moments where we lose all hope and have a dark view on life. At first, it seems like pretentious, trippy music but it may have a meaning behind it all.

Mallsoft has seriously become one of my favorite sub-genres of vaporwave. So much nostalgia of aimlessly wandering around a mall where everything is too overpriced to buy. Love the review!!

In middle-income countries, the shopping malls never actually faded out, despite the abundance of online shops. They are mostly filled with clothes shops, along with furniture, toys, perfumes, and jewelry shops. They are usually combined with a large cinema and a food court featuring a dozen of fast-food brands and are fucking thriving. They have the best design solutions and straight-up cyberpunk stuff, such as self-driving cleaning machines, glass floors that change colors when you step on them, and cameras everywhere. If shopping was a religion, the shopping malls would definitely be its temples.

Now that I think of it, Madonna's "Material Girl" is 1980's hyper-consumerist propaganda.

If you can listen to a mallsoft album while inside of a mall, I'd recommend it. I walked around the Mall of America while listening to Palm Mall Mars, and it was awesome. There was certain moments where I couldn't tell if i was hearing the samples or the actual Mall.

There’s a mall in my hometown, it used to be packed, but it’s close to being closed down. The last time I was in there, only seeing one shopper every 90 feet or so, is only a distant memory. Mallsoft makes that memory vivid.

"...the unavoidable aura of the 80's and 90's we all once lived in." *me, born in '95:* yes. i can relate

Cat Corp did an amazing album on my label where he went to a mall in Finland and took field recordings of the bustle/crowd, then used this sample alongside the music. it's SO authentic and vibrant

They took out the water fountain at the mall I go too. I think those who don't understand this genre weren't born before the internet took over. The mall was the Amazon/eBay of it's time. If you wanted something you couldn't find at a department store you had to go to the mall. Or if like me you were lucky enough to go maybe once ever few months it was a highlight of your childhood. It was an experience like you say physically. That era is gone. You can instantly get whatever you want now. We are so spoiled. I miss those days.😢

I might wanna find a "10 hour mallsoft" video to sleep too. As a Gen Xer this music is a dream come true...nostalgia be damned.

That's one of the things that I miss from buy vaporwave cassettes, vinyls, vhs, merch,... Something physical, like a place to just relax and search for all the different stuff, maybe one day there will be a Vaporwave mall... or maybe it will be just a dream

I played some mallsoft in a mall over the tannoy, it was creepy as fk

you nailed the sega dreamcast vibe right on the mall money.

I have " yes! We're open " on cassette.

Attention K-Mart Shoppers on the internet archive is the collection of these mall music and commercial cassettes and something most of you either already know or want to check out but it's also here on youtube for your convenience.

Glad you mentioned Vacant Places by Hantasi as it truly is one of the emptiest, bleakest mallsoft albums one can find.

You sir have earned a subscriber, I’ve recently entered the Vaporwave A E S T H E T I C and seeing your channel and it’s level of content has made me very happy.

This is probably my favorite video you've done so far. Mallsoft is something ethereal. I think you listen less with your ears, and more with the middle of your brainstem. It's a lot like a shopping trip itself. Not meant to be an engaging, challenging journey. But more of a setting, or a backdrop to whatever you happen to be thinking about until you get to the right aisle and find what you came for. Then everything snaps back and you realize where you are and what you're doing. This video somehow captured the same feeling. Jornt did something amazing with MARS, and I'm gonna treasure that tape for the rest of my life. I'm excited to see so much more out of all of you guys.

You are starting to be my favorite youtuber.

Thanks for the shoutout and use of ETHEREAL, complements such a good video

0:19 That girl in the white dress is me trying to achieve my lifegoals.

Without a doubt the best part of malls for me was the pretzels or pizza, and that feeling of looking around for a hot new item that you wish you could afford/buy. Doesn't help that I live in a smaller town, so going to a mall in general was a treat for me, so my appreciation for Mallsoft is HEAVILY amplified.

Oh? Mallsoft? Never heard of it. Since I'm into dead malls, and malls that are active as well, I should check it out. Thank you for this video. I would have never heard of this without this video. Once again, I appreciate it. Have a good day and week! - Ian :)

Nice and dreamy video Pad. Wish we could buy mallsoft cassettes and vinyls inside an actual mall, while the mall music plays on

Mallsoft is the perfect example of how impactful branding and design is. We took something that literally no one gave a crap about, repackaged it and slapped this aesthetic to it and now it's something completely new. Amazingly creative to do.

Mallsoft speaks to me in a spiritual level. Growing up in the 80s, being a teenager in the 90s and as a young adult in the early 2000s, mall culture has been ingrained in me. While malls there in the US are dying because of online retails, malls here in Asia are thriving. Our malls could not compare in terms of size and extravagance than their American counterparts. If you've been to a mall in Singapore, Hong Kong or the Philippines, you'll be in awe of the magnificent and terrifying beauty of our shopping malls.

YES A VIDEO ABOUT MALLSOFT

pad, i love your videos. im so glad you made an album about mallsoft! its my favorite genre. but please link the albums you talk about in your videos in the description!! you know how hard it can be to find vaporwave albums, so please help us and the artists you mention 💖

"Like a Sega dreamcast game cover straight from the 2000's" That my friend is the absolute comparison

love this, huge fan of this end of Vaporwave. There are a few cool mixes on youtube synced to Mall shopping videos/clips...and I want more! Maybe the release Palm Mall Mars will lead to one...Anyway great video!

Damn I get a real feel of nostalgia when I watch your videos. Keep it up.

i hate that malls are dying. i love them, and I think they are a very valuable part of American culture

Mallsoft -is- my favorite subgenre of Vaporwave, and I love listening to it. there are very few albums that I've listened to that I don't generally like, when it's done to be mallsoft, it works well, and I like that you mentioned album covers, because again, almost everything Vaporwave practically requires it's album art to encompass the tone and feeling of the music. did places like on the mallsoft album covers exist? are they just extended phantoms of our imagination from when we were kids, our small minds seeing everything as more colorful, vivid, and full of palm trees? were there... ever palm trees and fountains? were the floors actually that clean and marble-reflective? wait, what were malls really like? Mallsoft always gives you just enough to latch your wandering thoughts onto without laying down anything foundational, letting your nostalgia and tampered memories fill the void.

So glad I came across this genre

I was born in gen x and never experienced the big boom of the mall industry, but even when I listen to mallsoft I remember memories of walking around the huge mall in the city 2 hours away that hadn’t had an architectural update since 1994...where the floor was always shiny at all times and the fake plants always looked bright, where I would here modern music over an old sound system and where the plaza that I sat at waiting for my mom to come out of a shop when my legs were hurting was. Mallsoft has always been special to me because when I was little I didn’t have the best life, but the mall was a wonderland where I could get everything and anything, a magic place I would go once every couple of years filled with places to eat and things to buy. Malls are great.

As a child, I used to go to the Forest Fair mall, I remember that distinct smell of cinnamon stick pretzels, the small shop that sold retro games, everything. It's all shut down now, but MallSoft brings me back to that matrix-life; feeling how empty it all truly was.

High quality analysis, great vid, subbed. Love your content.

I love these vids so much. I love how you create a mood for the vid in the beginning of these vids, It makes feel like i'm in a mall in the 90s, even tho I was born in the '00s

Very well done!! Please keep em coming!

i heckin love mallsoft, this is a delight! and your analyses are always so...legit poetic, i really love your narrative style.

Love the channel man. Another awesome video.

Hell yeah! Love waking up to a new video from Pad!

Yeah! Been excited for this. Definitely worth the wait. Keep it up man!

I really love this video and your channel in general. You have opened up my eyes to whole new genres and sub-genres of great music.

I've been really into this stuff for a while and love it. One of my favorites though is the one you mentioned. Christmas at Crystal Valley Mall. It just takes me back to when I was a kid and we'd go to the mall to shop for Christmas. It gives me this nostalgia and longing but somewhat comforting.

been waiting on this for a while

Love your videos

I recently fell in love with this genre. Thank you for this informative video

This is honestly my favorite channel on youtube, every video is top notch!

Definitely my fave sub genre. I love everything Corp has ever put out. Great video as usual dude! Appreciate ya!

Excellent video about such subdirection Pad! Our Corp friend put a pretty strong efforts in it ) Hope to see in future more reviews on Broken Transmissions and Hardvapour directions as well )

Another Bumping vid Pad! It's oddly satisfying when you are very descriptive when it comes to scenarios. Keep the good work! Ps. I am window shopping at the mall as I type this!

Watching these videos during my senior year of high school and scholarship weeks, it makes me feel more relaxed

Thanks pad. Your channel slaps

Love the mixed live recordings and crowd noise I can’t get enough I need more mallsoft ,

YESS FINALLY!! love it love it love it. gonna hear all the new recs tonight and dream about food courts and new shoes

this is an insanely good video, full of thoughtful commentary! keep up the good work, dude! this is great!

Your descriptions of these unique sounds make more sense than any music reviewer i've heard in a while.

Love mallsoft! Quite new to most of the sub-genres, but there's definitely a few gems in transit. Personally, I'm interested in artists that don't only tackle mallsoft, but go full post-mallsoft. Hantasi is almost there, but I'm looking for something with a bit more of a human connection. Take spacewave (the empty vaccuum stretchy slightly wavery sinewave with heavy long reverb on it) and put it back in the shoppingmalls, letting it echo over the marble floors, emphasizing the increase in vacant shop lots. Interlude songs would be interviews with folks in their mid 30's reminiscing about a certain location having their favorite clothing store. That's all gone now. Songs with last calls over the PA system, followed up by electronic buzzing of the anti-homeless fences going down for the night. Maybe closing with a full on shouting match between an employer and employee shouting they're not doing a good enough job, being payed too little, escalating into an "i don't need this job" walkout. Basically the glamour of the malls of yesteryears eating itself alive, unable to change with the times. The end of the mall as we know it, replaced by screens, warehouses and delivery vans. Thanks for sharing Pad, got me typing a good bit of text once again ;)

A few years ago, Mashable posted some images of American malls in the 80s, I looked at them and felt like I was back in the early 90s walking through my local shopping mall with my mom. After studying the images for a bit it finally dawned on my, the images felt so familiar because many of them were shot in the EXACT mall that I went to as a kid, the Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove, New York (which is still open and somewhat thriving). Thank you for making this video and if you get a chance, check out that Mashable article!

Is it just me or does mallsoft seem ahead of its time. I may just be a bit to young to fully understand the nostalgia of shopping in the 90s, but i find shopping in malls to be something we still do on a regular basis. To me mallsoft is what i would expect us to be listening to in about 10 years. I do very much admire the idea of mallsoft being nostalgic but i personally dont feel nostalgia for shopping in malls as of today. Perhaps its people who grew up in inner city areas who spent their childhood years wondering around in shopping malls that find mallsoft to be nostalgic as the idea of consumerism may have seemed new and existing to them as children. what draws me to this subgenre of vaporwave is the confusion i feel when confronting it.

this is hella nice 👌 keep it up, man!

Palm Mall and Yes! We're Open were the first mallsoft albums I listened to. I loved them. So hypnagogic and lovely.

Amazing video as always Pad! I f'n love mallsoft

Wow. Amazing video and channel!

When I first started listening to Vaporwave it was Mallsoft and Vaportrap that kept me exploring. Thanks for the video and turning other people onto the sub-genre...it's not for everyone and usually gets derided in common circles but it truly is the music for abandoned places especially malls (check out an abandoned mall video here and listen to mallsoft with the original sound turned down...it will make sense immediately). And for a quick view of the sub-genre just search the tag mallsoft at BC and enjoy. Thanks again.

Mallsoft is a really interesting and versatile genre. It can arouse any emotion from weird, lonely depression to soothing nostalgia. hypnagogic or groovy. such a great genre. and a great vid. thanks Pad

Awesome vid as always pad !

Love shopping, love malls, love vaporwave, so by default I LOVE mallsoft. Great video man, you just got a happy new sub!

Mallsoft is hands down my favorite sub-genre to derive from Vaporwave, something about that mall vibe that's super nostalgic. Great Video!

Finally, pad channington and mallsoft! :)

I work in a mall and with the holidays coming up I tend to come in earlier in the morning hours before it's open to the public and being in an empty mall with closed shops while listening Hologram Plaza is amazing.

Very good. Managed to explain the feelings I have towards the genre but could not put into words in a coherent manner. Mallsoft is a comfortable and reassuring kind of music in a way.

I actually did my senior project in college on music history. The 21st century piece I wrote for it was a mallsoft piece that utilised late 1990s pop tunes with filters and reverb in order to pay tribute to a old mall I used to go to as a kid: the Great Mall of the Great Plains.

A review on Hologram Plaza would be great. A VINYL release of that album would be even better!

What about video about Broken Transmission (or signalwave)?

After taking a look at grocery store vaporwave and Mallsoft, I'd love to see a similar video with nature and weather (channel) vaporwave! It'd be a great contrast in how artists have simultaneously created the ambience of manmade structures and consumerism while others have been able to recreate the feelings we've seen and heard while in a jungle or watching a rainy window from inside (I.e how ocean grunge was able to recreate the "heavy" sounds of the ocean)

My mall is dying but somehow I love the emptyness of the mall in a way. It's nostalgic

Tbh online shopping creates a feeling of anxiety that in person shopping doesn't. When you spend money it feels bad, but in person that feeling gets subsumed by the pleasure of holding the thing that you got. But online that immediate gratification is gone. Leaving you with the anxiety of spending money out of your tight budget with no object to justify it with. Almost as though what you got was immediately had it stolen from you. Obviously not a real problem but I get this everytime

i love this kinda music. reminds me of being in the lady's loos at a shopping mall or a service station. i love it, bring a back good memories.

Great video! You gave me enough albums to fill a good part of the day. Thank you. I don't know if we can consider this album as mallsoft but Immune's Breathless was awesome too (many techno-based samples so i don't know...). I always enjoyed listening Breathless in the subway. Sometimes the experience was pretty trippy. ^^

Dude you are an amazing resource

I didn't really get into vaporwave until mallsoft started being a style. What really sold me on the whole idea was music played like you're in an empty mall, because nothing quite compares to that sound. The mall has a lot of memories for me and I still find myself going if only to see what kind of stuff is making it to shelves now. The mall is a place of utter excess trying to get you lost in its walls. The more variety the more they can trap you as you make purchases that you wouldn't have under any other circumstances. Works well but as stated the internet can give more variety faster. We humans are like a bunch of addicts seeking any novelty we can get our hands on and once one has indulged that addiction they become jaded. Their brain has hardwired that action to a dopamine response and thus the actions taken to receive that high are committed to memory. Just like cigarettes however we reach a state where we block out all the stimulus and really take in your surrroundings and look at the hollow stores and vacant lots. I think that is at the heart of the genre, that memory has so many facets to it. Being able to feel like you are there again just content to walk around window shopping to waste some time. The aesthetic of vaporwave is nostalgia which I think will lead to vaporwave encompassing everything so long as people retain interest in it.

I've been working on a film that takes places in a mall in the 80s, and sometimes at lunch, I'd put some vaporwave in my earbuds and space out in the mall when everyone else is eating at catering. It was a great experience to just drop out into another world with the assistance of Mallsoft

the days when the act of shopping had an soundtrack. they wanted u to feel like buying stuff. the mall sound in time with the store sound. it was epic

Groceries' Yes! We're Open is one of my all time FAVORITE albums

i already love mallsoft. and in the middle of 2020, this hits real different.

Woodfield mall I go to is the largest in the Chicagoland area and it is the busiest I have ever seen out of all the years of going there. So much money went into its most recent renovation, even opening a large food court instead of just little restaurants or fast food joints [for some reason, there was never one and it was always strange it did not have one compared to other malls]. They are doing so much to make sure they continue to modernize itself and stay relevant. It is interesting to see.

Is genre, so hyper specific insane and I love it

Ah Mallsoft ... 1) I also remember the hustle and bustles of various malls, large and small. And I am witnessing now with most malls dying and some hanging on by a thread (mostly by adapting with the times and having the better "anchor stores" like say Wegman's as opposed to Sears or JcPenny's). Interesting examples of contrasts indeed. 2) The mallsoft branch of vapour, which can also be considered the closest we have to a "mall on-demand", both confirm the mall's original design and undercuts it. On the one hand, the music works because we remember the space and everything in it, which includes the advertising (something the merchants were counting on). I guess they knew how effective it would be on adults but didn't anticipate (how could you) how much of an impact it would have on kids as kids are the really impressionable ones. After all, blend in clean floors, water fountains (mistaken for wading pools), the allure of ice cream and everything we could possibly want ... no wonder it seems like a magical land at times =]. But the undercut comes in that a) malls are changing or dying out entirely and b) we can, therefore, have that "mall-going experience" without all the drawbacks: parking lot jungle, crowds of people (most noticeable in the summer for sure). Even it costs anywhere from $10 to $40 to get that cassette, it's only once =D 3) Since you mentioned 식료품groceries (or groceries-store), there is a great concept at play with those albums that have gone unnoticed I think. In the three albums, which I've personally combined into a playlist called The Complete Shopping Experience, what you are really hearing is the history of 20th-century shopping. 슈퍼마켓Yes! We’re Open is all about the supermarket, but not just the actual physical space. You hear different time eras also: Aisle 4 sounds like it's from the 1980s whereas Aisle 7 sounds like it's from the mid-1960s. (And yes, I'll be remiss and not point out Aisle 3's nod to the Asian mart). In my own mind's eye, not only can I imagine this large space but somehow it can take on many of the qualities from different eras. It's as if Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Piggy Wiggly and Market Basket were all in the same spot. Continuing on that note, HOUSEWARES is much more about those chain box retail spots: your Wal-Marts and your Targets. It's that one place where you can go no matter where you are and you should get everything you need there. The layout is the same. Your expected products in stock are the same. And the wild mood swings are the same: mild indifference going there, upticks and downticks walking through there, emptiness upon departure. Finally, we get 터넷 쇼핑 (Ascension), which is your Amazon experience and all that that entails. 4) I think it's also appropriate that since Pall Mall Mars was mentioned - and I also have a cassette of that (same with the 식료품groceries bundle and I preordered ショップ @ ヘルシンキ or Shopping at Helsinki on vinyl) - it's worth pointing out the main inspiration behind that work was Christopher Hansen's visual work "News from Home" (found here: vimeo.com/226116678), which itself uses some of 猫 シ Corp.'s more ambient pieces (and one of Khoven's now called Valyri). It certainly does raise the question: is there shopping on Mars? =].

"Juggernaut of the Mallsoft genre." Can't say I expected to hear that phrase when I woke up this morning.

I remember walking in a mall with my parents and it was so long yet comfortable almost like no matter how exhausted I felt my younger optimistic motivation kept me going forward

This is all so bizarre and cool!

06:05 Is the Lakehurst mall in Waukegan, IL. Demolished in the early 2000s. Lovely place.

issa nice genre

I could literally almost taste this video

Notification gang here. Praise the vapor!

Sam Goody, getting kicked out by the rent a cops, Software Etc, Sbarro Pizza, pennies in a fountain pond, ｔｈｅ ａｒｃａｄｅ. I miss a good mall.

I love mallsoft, just something about it gives me nostalgic feelings from a past I never experienced.