Review: Content Nullity - Chemtrail Conspiracy Theory

I open the cassette casing and half of the contents spill out: a tiny key, a piece of smashed circuitboard, a backpatch, pieces of unidentifiable plastic debris. I press play on the tape and it’s already mid-swing: a gigantic Gregorian hum rising and falling between pillars of laser beam, then a voice screaming something indecipherable, trapped in a furnace of white noise and stifling heat, folding back in on itself and pounding helplessly upon the surrounding walls, fighting to be heard above the throb of a spaceship alarm.

Content Nullity is a world within itself; a mind trapped within a feedback loop of immortal haunts, chewing away at thoughts until minor distractions – nagging regrets, puzzling injustices – become black holes of regret and hysteria. I listen to the loop cassette for half an hour straight. It’s obsessive and terrifying. There is no end. Death doesn’t come in a gloriously sudden bang of salvation; it’s a process of samsaric fatigue, sending the body around in circles until all of the colour and meaning drains out. In the linear context of live performance, Content Nullity was pure cathartic ejection – a body vacating itself, obliterating bone and flesh through grenades of serrated noise and feedback. But here the body is already a mere vessel – a dry husk bobbing on the surface of life’s own terminal lake, rejected by life and unclaimed by death.