Style: Ambient, drone, dark mallsoft
Primary Emotions/Themes: Lost in an abandoned building, forever seeking the exit
Thoughts: I have never understood mallsoft - a subgenre of vaporwave that is supposed to make you feel like you are in an abandoned mall. I tried several times with some giants in the genre - Catsys Crops Palm Mall and Palm Mall Mars being the main ones. For the life of me I could not get into the genre. After hearing Atrium's Hallmark 87 I think I was looking in the wrong place.
The music in Hallmark is distant... in the literal sense. It feels like I am listening to music coming out of a dying speaker somewhere at the other end of a large room... or gathering center.... or behind a wall. Whatever the effect is, the music sounds like it is meant for someone else and I just happened to stumble in on the broadcast.
The music is slow, it is repetitive, it is also incredibly alien. This sense that I am listening to something that was meant for someone else other than me is pervasive throughout the entirety of the album. At no point does the music feel like I am the intended person to be listening.
Be that the slow beats of the opener Looking Up or the creepy piano led Portman, none of these songs f e e l like they are meant to be listened to by me. They are relics of a forgotten time and place (maybe a mall?) that just forgot to turn off its music before it went extinct.
Hallmark '87 changed my mind of the mallsoft genre. This is an absolutely intriguing album. It's repetitive nature and entirely otherworldly feel make this something unique in my collection. Maybe I need to take a second look into this genre after all.
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