Chain Store Mix

Chain Store Mix
Malte Lochstedt

SD Card and Poster
Edition of 44
Dec 2016

The audio material was recorded this year in clothing stores of different brands, mostly in malls. The kind of music the stores play varies in style but almost all is dance orientated.
All bigger brands have there own sound channel, with specially pre-produced mixes or automix options. The acoustic design is usually bad, there exists punctual sound spots where the speakers are installed. The rest is blurred. I usually try to find out good acoustic spots and then move between them. The small recorder in my hand, haeadphones on, trying to behave like a normal customer. Ambient noises are loud, especially escalators and sounds which come from the big mall corridors outside the stores. A lot of typical actions in a store produce hiss sounds, like moving coat hangers or touching plastic wrapped stuff. Entering a store is like going though an acoustic door also, because one hears not from the outside what is played inside.

ML, Dec. 2016