Under the pseudonym B. Dalton, I created a series of albums in the mallsoft genre of vaporwave. The creation was inspired by early memories formed in the mid-1980s Suburban American shopping malls. The intention was to convey dismay at the corporate/capitalist hijacking of culture in middle America while retaining the melancholy nostalgia that the aesthetic evokes.
Emphasis was placed on the atmosphere of the albums. Shopping mall ambient noise was recorded in Finland and the US to serve as the base layer for all tracks. The tracks were recorded from a computer into a 4-track tape machine, then back into the computer to add tape hiss and detuning from the imperfect reel rotation.
The album “After the Dream Comes True” samples heavily from an in-depth report about a new shopping mall in rural Kansas in the early 80s. This time capsule offers a raw view of capitalist greed at the time. With the threat of ecological collapse, it is particularly haunting to see the trajectory these actions would result in.