ショッピングワールドjp – MARKET WORLD
Recommendation: ☀☁☁
Every once in a while, vaporwave puts out something truly ugly. Look at that album artwork: it’s as if a Southeast Asian tech support computer vomited up the collected covers to pre-Y2K Microsoft Encarta after losing a fight to a JPEG compressor’s untested run through JavaScript. It’s fucking awesome.
MARKET WORLD is the first of three albums by ショッピングワールドjp,1 and arguably it is the artist’s most well-known album within the early vaporwave scene. This album is one of the first releases in the mallsoft subgenre, predating Disconscious’ Hologram Plaza by several months and setting the basic prototype for the dreamlike, transportive experience that is shopping in the virtual plaza. Tracks are extremely short – only seven of nineteen pass the two-minute mark – and they are generally simple edits with two or three samples mixed together and soporifically edited. These juxtapositions are relatively simple and free from pretension: for example, “DATA POOL” is simply a muzak sample with running water, and “PLAYING TIME” is the same except with the laughter of children instead of water.
Interestingly, there are tons of sex sounds taken from pornographic media (e.g. “MIDNIGHT BUSINESS” and “REMOTE PLEASURE”) and they’re not very hidden; the album is as much PORN WORLD as it is MARKET WORLD. Whether they’re effectively or ineffectively kitsch will be up to the individual listener. There are mixing mistakes on “DOOR BUSTERS,” “GLOBAL UPLINK,” and “JOY UPLOAD” where the tracks suddenly decrease and increase in volume relative to those adjacent. The most effective tracks are the ones that relish in MARKET WORLD‘s swirly ambient music rather than the R&B that makes up so many of the other albums within the genre; there are a couple of these too (e.g. “LOVE MAIL”), and as a result they sound extraordinarily inappropriate in comparison to the vibe for which MARKET WORLD generally tries to elicit.
All in all, MARKET WORLD is worth checking out by fans of Disconscious and Nyetscape. It’s a brief, worthwhile stroll through a forgotten nineties shopping center.
Tracklist
1. CITY STRUT – (1:00)
2. COMING ATTRACTION – (1:56)
3. DATA POOL – (2:15)
4. ENDLESS STAIRCASE – (2:00)
5. SEASIDE CONNECTION – (1:28)
6. MIDNIGHT BUSINESS – (1:16)
8. SEASIDE CONNECTION – (1:28)
8. SHOPPINGTIMES – (2:02)
9. REMOTE PLEASURE – (1:51)
10. DOOR BUSTERS – (1:08)
11. DIGITAL SHEEN – (1:34)
12. GOING UP – 1:14)
13. GLOBAL UPLINK – (2:12)
14. LOVE MAIL – (2:52)
15. SHOP IN TIME – (1:28)
16. CUSTOMER SERVICE – (2:21)
17. JOY UPLOAD – (1:24)
18. NIGHTTIME SURF – (1:44)
19. PLAYING TIME – (2:10)
1Japanese translation: “Shopping World JP”