Mallsoft is a subgenre of Vaporwave that first appeared in 2012 that blends the main characteristics of the genre with what can be described as background/elevator music. Mallsoft typically samples music commonly played in malls and other shopping centers, such as Easy Listening, Smooth Jazz or other forms of background or elevator music associated with Muzak, and it sometimes mixes in some elements from Ambient. Mallsoft artists often apply to said mall muzak a heavy use of reverb in addition to other editing practices commonly found in vaporwave.
As a result, mallsoft is made to resemble the ambiance and reverberation of large, crowded malls with huge spaces and hazy atmospheres, sometimes incorporating Field Recordings of actual malls to further achieve this sound. The 2016 album ショップ @ ヘルシンキ by 猫 シ Corp. (Cat System Corp.) is a testament to this, as it includes samples of mall recordings from Helsinki, Finland. Mallsoft albums often elicit these tones in a hazy, dream-like atmosphere, sometimes expressing nostalgia for cruising through popular malls and 1980s-1990s consumerism. Undertones of hyper-capitalism or even anti-capitalism are also common. Alternately, some mallsoft instead uses a more eerie or ominous atmosphere to evoke the feeling of abandoned, empty malls.
An early example of the genre is Hantasi's debut album Vacant Places from late 2012, which mixes muzak with heavy layers of delay and reverb. Other prominent albums which helped to define the sound of the genre in the following years include 슈퍼마켓Yes! We're Open by 식료품groceries and Palm Mall by 猫 シ Corp., with the latter being most noted for its 22-minute title track that blends distant-sounding muzak with the ambient noises of a mall. Kmart 1989-1992 by PowerPCME is also notable for its sampled material coming from the tapes of actual music played in a specific store, Kmart.
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