Sport3000- Clearance Sale
1.17.18 by Mike Haley

The Swiss financial services holding company Credit Suisse has predicted that upwards of 25% of US malls (roughly 275 shopping centers) will close in the next five years. That is on top of the landscape of skeletal boxes, or dead malls, currently rotting across the country. For every 100 Americans there are 2,353 square feet of shopping center space, which makes less and less sense in a reality where a person can grab bacon, lasers, and DJ equipment for their cat all from the comfort of a sad, but convenient couch.

I was talking with my dad not long ago and the conversation, of course, went to his youth. Nothing is more special to a boomer than a boomer’s coming of age… Beatles and shit. He’s going on about how there used to be stores around the neighborhood. “People could walk to all the local stores and get whatever they needed, but not anymore, they’re all gone.” Yeah, you did that. You replaced the local Main or Market or whatever the street was in that particular town with standardized zones of acquisition. Don’t get me wrong, malls were stone cold cool to hang out at as a kid, shiiiiii.  But that’s probably it for em, huh? In use for but a few decades, malls are now essentially time capsules. The cities remain dry and malls are downgraded to museums of spent neon and plastic trees from the worst era of plastic trees. Pretty cool, right? Perhaps one day they’ll become capitols for the various post-nuclear survivor factions who use expired Kohl’s Cash as currency. Here is an artist rendering of what that might look like:

Sport3000, who does something silly with the font of course, is a person, or people, or line of code with a bad case of mall-brain. The blurry-eyed lounge drip of “Clearance Sale” goes thirteen tracks deep, setting out to narrate the life and death of a department store, and absolutely nailing that objective. The opener,30,000 Square Meters, is fresh and welcoming -The floors are buffed so well they look like you could ice skate on them. Piles of sweaters and husky boy slacks are displayed in precise piles like a Navy man folded them. Generally, the first half of the tape is extremely chill. The security cameras are still running, all the registers are working, etc…  Each track on the front end walks us through another department, Cosmetics & Beauty sounding particularly popping, even visiting a restaurant on the top floor. How fancy. With majorly impressive form, Sport3000 vacuumed the DNA of a fictional high-end shopping mall and it’s decline. Speaking of the decline… By the time we reach the title track Clearance Sale there is a guy holding a huge arrow sign outside. “80% off!” “Final Day!” Not only does the malsoft vibe begin to languish into depression, buffering glitches and long moments of silence stick the the back end tracks. Carl the guard isn’t monitoring the security footage anymore. Hell, the cameras haven’t worked in months. Lollipops from Halloween promotions stick to every possible surface, including the mannequins, who can even feel the end coming. Everything must go!

Closed Forever.

Adhesive Sounds only made 25 copies of this tape! Hurry up and buy one from them or Burlington Coat Factory.