Cat System Corp.
Jornt Elzinga (born 1989), commonly known as Cat System Corp. (Japanese: 猫 シ Corp., Hepburn: Neko Shi Corp.), is a Dutch musician regarded as a vaporwave figure that originated the mallsoft subgenre.
Elzinga's music explores concepts of late 20th century capitalism, presenting ambient shopping center recordings characteristic of mallsoft.
It also portrays specific events, such as an alternate history where the September 11 attacks never happened, or a fictional soundtrack to a retro fashion TV series.
"[5]By his mid-teens and with faster access to the Internet, Elzinga discovered more of what he called "weird music,"[6] including dark ambient, drone, and noise.
[4] Elzinga wanted to choose an alias name involving cats, and stated that "Corporation" fits the themes he would pursue with his music.
[16][b] In 2014, Elzinga collaborated with anonymous musician Telepath on the album Blue Dream, whose musical style was once described as "washed out euphoria" by a reviewer.
[18] He also produced Corporate Mixtape with artist Donovan Hikaru in 2015, where he explores futuristic working soundscapes, and created a remix of Luxury Elite's "Strut" for her album World Class.
[3][22] It is the second best-selling mallsoft release of all time on Bandcamp, while its October 2021 cassette reissue is considered an "increased demand" product of independent record label Lost Angles.
"[3][37] Of Oasys, Jeffrey Howard stated that the album "might save your life, transporting you back to a time when George W. Bush was in office.
Games such as Grand Theft Auto V (2013) partly inspired him to produce Palm Mall,[6] while films and TV shows such as Vanilla Sky (2001) and The Walking Dead motivated the narrative aspects of and were sampled on his music.
[4] Black Mesa Research Facility (2017), a collaboration with musician Mezzaluna, was Elzinga's first release to be themed around a video game, Half-Life.
[40] Elzinga initially produced music with Adobe Premiere and later transitioned into FL Studio, with the consideration of using electronic drums for his live performances.
He produced albums such as Building a Better World with Telepath by continuously emailing audio files to each other, similarly to the production process of 2814's Rain Temple (2016).
[37] Elzinga's Bandcamp page includes visual influences of synthwave and chillwave, such as pastel colors and pixel art palm trees.
[47] The cover of 2016's Cosmopolitan Dreams continued this trend, of which Simon Chandler stated, "since the images are often computer-generated and artificial, ... this sense of limitlessness is a fantasy.
[46] To critic Miguel Principe, the album's 20-minute-long eponymous track "simulates a walk through a mall," giving it a "background feel" that differs from other mallsoft releases.
[51] Shopping @ Helsinki directs an elevator music style as opposed to melancholic feelings, and was highlighted by researchers for this, along with Palm Mall and Oasys.
[31] Building a Better World creates an atmosphere of optimism that Poppel Yang of Chinese website Biede described as a less dystopian version of 2814's Birth of a New Day (2015).
[28] The album's title track is composed of a rhythm that at times focuses on certain elements of the ambiance, which Bandcamp Daily's Ari Delaney felt created "the perfect soundtrack for a neon metropolis.
