Null & Void "Possibilities (Discoverable Thoughts)" LP
Side A: Bach Variation, Japanese Forest, When I Fell Down, Einstein's Theory Of Relativity, #2, Our New Life
Side B: The Motorcycle Song, The Philosophy Song, Aubrey Beardsley!, A Party Filled With Thieves, A Dream Wah!
Recorded between 1981 and 1982, the 3rd and final LP by Fullerton, CA’s brilliant but short-lived NULL AND VOID was never properly released in its time. After being rejected by head-scratching label execs in the U.S. and having met with letters of rejection along the lines of “There’s a lot going on here… I’m not sure what it is… I think it’s too much, etc.”, the record was, sadly, shelved for the next 30 years.
From Mutant Sounds:
"Like Half Machine Lip Moves On Some Faraway Beach, this final genius stroke from these increasingly warped Californian post punk merchants (following my posts of their Happiness And Contempt and Montage Morte EP’s, the latter of which shares a few tracks with this album) ratchets up the stakes significantly; their angle of approach here weaving Chrome-plated and dystopian shaded tangents through a series of emotionally loaded and pop savvy oblique advances that are absolutely breathtaking in their collective impact. This album was shopped around all over back in the day and deemed “too weird” by one and all. Feh! Silly children…they missed the boat on a stone cold classic…"
This, at the very least, is a product of an outstandingly talented and overlooked “synth wave” band taking their music into new and increasingly warped directions. An avant pop “post punk experimental acid music” masterwork, a truly endless piece of music, and the grand vision of NULL AND VOID’s William Shifflette.
"The phrase ‘art-damaged’ could have been invented to describe this death-obsessed reaction against Falwell’s America, which cites Emma Goldman as an inspiration in its liner notes and evokes the doomed, indolent zeitgeist of a California gay scene coughing in the valley of the shadow of AIDS, presaging Coil’s ‘The Horse Rotorvator’ both aesthetically and thematically." ~ KFJC
"Chrome is one of the first references, as much like Creed/Edge created a sonic world where their songs existed outside of much else musically, so does N&V exist in a space very much their own unique domain... Such an original sounding record, blending everything from pop to classical to punk into one great whole. I can't recommend this highly enough. The massive foldout poster contains essays from two band members (and a friend), relating their start in and around the LA punk scene through their Eighties wind-up (a tale in which the Psychedlic Furs feature in) and their story made me feel like a bigger ass for not having listened to them before this. So good that I'm actually mad I just found out about it now. Buy this immediately." ~ Rich Kroneiss, TERMINAL BOREDOM
"Imagine This Heat & Scott Walker recordin 'Deceit', Byron Black/Living Objects coverin 'Eskimo' or Siren-era Chrome reinterpreting 'Call Me MISSter' (sides 2 & 4 respectively). Yeah, it's that GOOD." ~ Tom Lax, SILTBREEZE
