Influences Elzinga was influenced by artists including Architecture in Tokyo, Luxury Elite,
Macintosh Plus, and Telepath. Although he said Architecture in Tokyo and Luxury Elite had an influence on him, calling them "the OGs," Telepath is Elzinga's favorite, as both worked together on several albums. One musician he listened to frequently in 2013 is Toyotaセリカ; although more inactive than others, Elzinga said, "he has some amazing albums." One specific artist sampled on Elzinga's first releases is singer
Sade, whose song "Tar Baby" was also sampled on
Floral Shoppe.
Video games and films had a lasting influence on Elzinga's music as well. Games such as
Grand Theft Auto V (2013) partly inspired him to produce
Palm Mall, 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. In one of his albums, Elzinga included a sample from
The Last of Us (2013); according to him in 2018, only one person had ever found it.
Black Mesa Research Facility (2017), a collaboration with musician Mezzaluna, was Elzinga's first release to be themed around a video game,
Half-Life.
Musicianship 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 recalled that
News at 11 took nine months to produce, and that
Shopping @ Helsinki was his first album to feature original mall recordings. He stated that his origin country, the Netherlands, has smaller-sized shopping centers, which led him to a desire to visualise American-styled malls in his albums. Elzinga admitted not having any formal music education and not being able to write or read
musical notation. Although featuring instruments such as
saxophones in many of his songs, he only samples existing 1980s and 90s
jazz. He said he began his music career selecting specific
ambient works, stating that "everyone can make it." Referencing
Floral Shoppe, he jokingly said, "It's only slowed down
Diana Ross, right?" About his collaborative process, Elzinga maintains contact with many other vaporwave musicians, including Luxury Elite and Vaperror. 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).
Music and genres Genres explored by Elzinga's music include vaporwave, mallsoft, lofi,
smooth jazz, and
ambient.
Palm Mall features two widely differing sides: the ambient sounds of the first 20 minutes are featured in one single eponymous track, while the last 20 minutes present tracks with lengths closer to traditional vaporwave albums. Elzinga's Bandcamp page includes visual influences of
synthwave and
chillwave, such as pastel colors and
pixel art palm trees. Regarding album covers, writer Estivalet Raymundo noted that the artwork for
Palm Mall represented Elzinga's portrayal of "the mall" as a flawless but false space. 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." With
Palm Mall, Elzinga "constructed ... a virtual soundscape of visiting the mall" with tracks such as "Special Discount" and "First Floor", according to Paul Ballam-Cross of the
Journal of Popular Music Studies. 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. With
Oasys (2015), writer Jeffrey Howard commented that Elzinga developed the alias "from a warm and grainy sound to a cold and cacophonous one." In 2015's ''Class of '84
, Elzinga portrays a 1980s graduation classroom, while Sandrawave
(2016) samples exclusively from works by German singer Sandra. 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''. In
News at 11, Elzinga's vision of 9/11 draws mainly from 1980s and '90s smooth jazz songs.
The Weather Channel tracks compose the latter half of the album, of which Elzinga at one point in production had a five-hour-long playlist. Most of the beginning tracks are interspersed with TV broadcast clips from the morning before the attacks, ranging from
CarMax commercials in "Financial News", a recording of
The Today Show in "Downtown", and
Good Morning America on the opener of the same name. In
Lofi (2017), Elzinga shows a more
lofi-oriented direction to his music, while
Luxury Girls (2017) explores '90s retro fashion interspersed with interview clips to create a fictional soundtrack of a typical TV show from the time.
Palm Mall Mars serves as a "sequel" to the original
Palm Mall, and was Elzinga's last mallsoft release. The visual version of
Family. Work. Shop. was filmed on cassette, and features original recordings from Elzinga.
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). The album's title track is composed of a rhythm that at times focuses on certain elements of the ambiance, which
Bandcamp Dailys Ari Delaney felt created "the perfect soundtrack for a neon metropolis." ==Discography==