THE NULL SET

Formed by brothers Dave and Joe Machos in 1979, South Plainfield's Null Set played and recorded through the 1980s and pulled the plug in 1990. That's about as 80s-centric as it gets, especially given their sound: pop structures mixing raw and polish, jangly guitars, keyboards, the occasional jarring chord change, and the, uh, adenoidal (supposedly a nicer way of saying "strangled") vocals one heard in the dBs, Bongos, and other Indie records flooding the scene in the early 80s. Timing and luck being everything, the Null Set remained below the national Indie scene's radar, failing to reach even the modest level of recognition achieved by Crossfire Choir and the Blasés. That's unfortunate, but at least they were famous in New Brunswick, especially in providing most of the instrumentation for the Matt Pinfield-led Opium Vala. It's Dave Machos' "Last Night Dreaming" that Pinfield sings on the New Brunswick comp Mental Floss, with the Null Set backing.

This flyer is invaluable (for me, anyway), dredging up the memory of the Idle Chatter column distributed in New Brunswick's long-lost Cheap Thrills record shop.

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