Vinyl Sunday #2: Macintosh Plus – Floral Shoppe

Have you ever heard a record that sounds like having a dream about being trapped in a mall in the 80’s or early 90’s? I have, and it’s this one.

A while back, we were down on South Broadway doing some shopping and went into FM, which is a clothing boutique that also has a shockingly good selection of records. I saw this, but didn’t buy it at that point. Then later the same day, I saw someone posting about it on r/Vinyl and talking about how difficult it was to find and immediately kicked myself for not purchasing it.

A few weeks ago, I was down there on a solo trip to Postino for strategic mocktails and fancy toast brunch, and decided to stop back into FM on the off chance they still had it, and surprisingly they did!

Macintosh Plus is a pseudonym of Ramona Andra Langley, who primarily makes music under the alias Vektroid. This album, though, is THE album that essentially defined the Vaporwave “microgenre”. Vaporwave is an offshoot of Hauntology, which is where more of my favorites lie (please see last week’s post), but I do have an interest in Vaporwave, so I picked this up.

Apparently this record is hard to find because it technically was never officially legally released – you can’t actually sell it on Discogs as they banned it since the legal issues, probably mostly stemming from the fact that Diana Ross’ It’s Your Move is extensively sampled on the second track, never got ironed out.

Legality was apparently not the first worry of whoever keeps putting this out, though, because I’ve seen a number of versions of this on the internet. Mine happens to be on pink vinyl, but I’ve also seen gray and clear versions. It also has a different rear jacket tracklist to some of the other versions I’ve seen:

If you’ve ever seen horror webseries like the Backrooms, Local 58 or The Oldest View on YouTube, that’s the sort of vibe this record has. The Oldest View, especially, as that primarily takes place in a strange mall the protagonist stumbles into after finding an odd set of stairs in a forest.

The A side of this record is definitely more memorable than the B side, and starts off with a number of tempo changes, chopped and screwed samples, and an underlying Muzak feeling to the whole thing.

The B side is more mellow, less notable than the first half. The real standout here is the second track, “Lisa Frank 420 / Modern Computing”, where we find the problematic slowed samples from the Diana Ross song. It’s hypnotic, really.

Here’s the entire record on YouTube for your listening pleasure:

Kate rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars. Or records. Whatever. I’m tired.

My first film post will be up tomorrow. I’m mostly tired because I wrote that one first tonight. Time to go drink a kava beverage and relax.