Three for Three
by: gbanas92
Genki Picture Book
by Cactaur 98
A brief, but infinitely exciting vaportrap release, Genki Picture Book rides high on an abundance of interesting beats. Not only that, but the release offers up some really impressive genre mashups, like on the mallsoft / vaportrap confluence of “Menthol.” While the cacophonic beats are the main attraction, the areas that exist around the drums flirt with so many different subgenres of vaporwave that it’s impossible to walk away from this release anything short of impressed.
Brand New Lifestyle Center
by
Looking Through Sheets
A classic mallsoft sound never goes out of style, and Brand New Lifestyle Center is proof of that. A sprawling, hourlong release offering every sound imaginable from each corner of a once-thriving population hub, this release does a particularly fine job of bringing some menace to the mallsoft experience. While many other releases tend to focus more on a sense of eerie abandonment, Brand New Lifestyle Center brings a more human sense of dread to it than we’ve come to expect. “Restricted Area” sounds genuinely unsettling, as if something’s not quite right, and the fact this leads directly into a sample anyone familiar with Cat Corp. will recognize makes it even more suspicious. What’s going on in this mall?
The Blessed Life
by Vacation Bible School
What happens if you combine a church service with the idle town soundtrack to a Persona game? Well, you get something that sounds a lot like Vacation Bible School’s latest, The Blessed Life. Offering a frankly bizarre juxtaposition of funky, intermission-esque sounds, with the expected moodier sounds of a creepy church, and finally, some light broken-transmission, you get an album that rather than picking a lane, kinda drunkenly lurches back and forth between the lanes, not staying in any one place for too long. It brings an unexpectedly lively feeling to the whole experience. And hey, this is probably the only time you’ll hear Pink Floyd in church.