welcome to this week’s satellite cult dispatch. i’m so glad you’re here. i hope the artifacts i present you with will trap you in the host’s chair of a public access variety show, where you’ll be doomed to introduce acts of horrifying ineptitude for the rest of your days.
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complain to the creators
this slushy, ambient two track single by the niagara river brings a liminality to mallsoft——this isn’t a nostalgic take on the mall of the 80s, nor is it a contemporary dead mall walkthrough re: Dan Bell. at the risk of pushing a joke too far, it really is the backrooms, but not frightening. it is wistful and lonely but at peace.
Valentines Inc.Vol 1
out on Seoul-based net label JEJU DIGITAL, this album by George Roméo is the ambient, jazzy late night lo-fi soundtrack to a low-budget 80s softcore romance.
Aquatic Galleria
Celadon Plaza presents Aquatic Galleria, a collaborative mallsoft album from platinum towers, ホテル shampoo, and midnight première. incorporating elements of late night lo-fi, chillwave, and slushwave, this release feels like a hazy stroll through the women’s department at a Kaufmann's.
CHOONS FROM HONDALAND
disjointed, dark, and searching, this album by Garden XL incorporates breakcore, drill, hexd, surge, and grind core into one anxious and otherworldly sound collage.
music for the room
a slushwave-adjacent concept album about being trapped alone in a room (or rather, the Room), the release from c r y s t a l 日本 executes a haunting and timeless ambience that perfectly balances conflicting feelings of hope and hopelessness, fear and resignation.
video game art archive
the Video Game Art Archive might look like nothing more than a custom Tumblr blog, but it’s a treasure trove. it collects scans of video game art in high resolution, including games that are unexpected or obscure, and entries go back literally a decade (to February 2014), so there’s a lot to dig through.
sort the court!
the premise of Graeme Borland’s game Sort the Court!, playable in browser on itch.io, is simple: as the ruler of a kingdom, you answer yes or no to questions from your subjects. there is a lot of silliness.
void dive
Sinner Saints: Pride by lubott
i’ll leave you with the trailer for this 1994 karate movie, brought to you by the same studio that gave us the forever baffling Karate Rap: