The Mall is burgeoning at the forefront of an obscured DIY scene throughout the Midwest and south where you’d never guess some of the most otherworldly sounds in dance music might be coming at the hands of artists adjacent to hardcore and punk. As the outlet of founding member Mark Plant, the band has since expanded into a duo including fellow experimentalist Spencer Bible, and rendered their excellent sophomore effort, Time Vehicle Earth, a beguiling synergy of electricity and motion that spins this planet off its axis.

Plant spoke with +rcmndedlisten via e-mail about the Mall’s second chapter, the end of the world, and being the biggest freaks in the scene no matter where they are.

+rl: Time Vehicle Earth is your second full-length album as the Mall, but first since Spencer Bible joined the project to make it a duo. How would you describe the insights in sound he brought into the fold here that may not have been as visible on your 2020 debut, Zone?

Mark Plant: Spencer joined the project really understanding what the idea was. I think he really brought some calm and composed energy to the whole writing process. My idea is to always switch parts constantly and really jerk the listener around. Spencer brought a lot of reason to the table, like, “Hey maybe we should just play this part longer and let people vibe on it.” The kind of reason I would never find if I was just on my own. Really though, Spencer brought a LOT of the lead lines and themes to the table that we started jamming on to write the songs, and we bounced a lot off of each other the whole time. We decided on the vision for Time Vehicle Earth together and what the sound palette would be like, and I think we both took the lessons of Zone into consideration with what we wanted to do and with what we DIDN’T want to do.

+rl: An interesting bookend between Zone and Time Vehicle Earth is that the former arrived just week’s before the pandemic tolled the bells of the end of the world, but Time Vehicle Earth can be looked at as the rave ushering in the actual end times. When you create your music, how much consideration do you give to the reality of that actual moment – That it could all very well be a document of mankind’s apocalypse?

MP: I really truly believe that mankind has been convinced the apocalypse is coming since the dawn of time, and that many people long for an apocalypse because the unknown is truly terrifying without a lack of closure. I think an apocalypse also brings a nihilism that invites a lack of accountability for one’s own actions and impact on the world. The idea of Time Vehicle Earth is that the world isn’t ending. What we do matters and nihilism is a cowardly way out of being part of the world. The end times aren’t coming. Times are always coming that people will have to live through and face the consequences for, and we will have to suffer through that. Even if humans find a way to completely destroy themselves – Will that also destroy the world of dolphins, elephants, crows, all the other non-human persons of the world? Is there a sentient mycelium network judging us that will have to deal with the mess we create? I want to care for all of it, just in case. Time will move on without us and every action matters in the end. Finding a community is survival, and the isolating individualism, war, and colonialism enforced on us by capitalism will only result in a terrible world that we will still have to exist in. I think dance music is a truly freeing art form, a nearly magical experience of collective human feeling, and sometimes my only outlet in the societies we have where disconnecting and hiding yourself is expected and rewarded.

+rl: The Venn diagram linking industrial, goth, synth-pop and punk music is constantly being reexamined, but perhaps for reasons more fashionable than as a medium to purely convey what is felt through art. Time Vehicle Earth is more intentional in doing the latter, being singled out and defined by your vacant screams over a deconstruction of style points. What informs your ability to exist outside the rest?

MP: I want to preface with: I like all of the fashionable music. Fashion, even when applied to music, is a really important art form, and when music is an extension to an overall aesthetic I think it’s truly beautiful and helps a lot of people express themselves. We may be more blunt with how we express our emotions, but I’ve played in hardcore bands my whole life and definitely approached this project as a hardcore band before an electronic band/goth band, but I really do love all of that stuff and I think it comes through with our music. A lot of how we write and how we sound is informed by the equipment we use and the sound palettes we create, so even Zone’s sound was a bit of an accident. It’s kind of what happens when you make drum machine music and you’re just having fun with machines. Lyrically, it’s a whole different situation. Bands like Algebra Suicide where poetry is the focus or Fucked Up who creates a whole world for every album, those are huge and influential to me, and I spend too much time reading band’s lyrics and finding meaning through them. Spencer comes from the more avant-garde world of improvisational and free-form music and knows how to hold on to a vibe or move things in different ways than I would ever think because of that. I don’t think we could have settled with doing something by the numbers or even “correctly” when we have so much love for a lot of different kinds of music. This is still dance music at the end of the day, and for me, I want to make music that all of my friends can go out after work and have a good time without feeling like it’s too cool or pretentious for them to have a good time, but i still hope that the lyrics can create a situationist experience where people are confronting their emotions when they didn’t expect to.

+rl: At the end of November, you will be playing a run of shows with kindred peers, MSPAINT. With the Mall being from St. Louis, Missouri and MSPAINT calling Hattiesburg, Mississippi home, it feels like a strange revelation to discover two bands of absolute freaks in a part of the country that probably could not be any more in opposition to that. What is your hope for the future of music and creative scenes coming out of these oft-overlooked areas looking toward the future (as long as there is one?)

MP: The music scenes locally, at least the DIY shows, are fucking incredible in Hattiesburg and St. Louis. Getting any sort of attention for bands here on a national or international scale is really hard. Most bands are working class and have at least one other job in addition to booking shows, making art, doing flyers, all of that on top of writing music and being really good bands. Freaks are everywhere, though, and we’ve been dealing with people telling us that what we’re doing isn’t cool forever, so it’s always been fuck what everyone else thinks and let’s do exactly what we want to do with zero compromises. Listen, there’s so many more incredible bands in these smaller cities. We’ve seen them on tour and we see them at home. We may be the loudest and most annoying of all of them, but we’re all pretty undeterred by the lack of attention and most of the freaks in these cities don’t even want it. We’ve grown really supportive and wonderful communities in these places despite living near the worst bootlicking fascists in the country, and we became friends with MSPAINT through being in situations together where we are absolutely the weirdest people in the room and just MAGNIFYING each other in beautiful ways. MSPAINT are the truest and hardest working band out there and so incredibly powerful creatively. We’re gonna be the weirdest people in the room on these west coast shows, too. It’s gonna feel great to roll deep with it.

The Mall’s Time Vehicle Earth is available now.