NuL means "null" or "zero" in Afrikaans. It is the main distinction between the Roman and Arabic numeric systems. In the Arabic system, which we still use today, maths became possible, marking the start of the rise of the Machine.

In various places all over South Africa. Often in Johannesburg. Much fun. That's what we live for.

It puts the power of marketing and distribution to a large degree in the hands of everyone, rendering the services of record labels mostly obsolete, and opening the music market to a much wider variety of music. We live in exciting times.

No. Absolutely not.

Adriaan Pelzer and Simon Kruger have been working together since forming the avant-garde rock group Nothing in 1996. After Nothing broke up in 1998, they started experimenting with electronic music on a Pentium II 350 Mhz. Using mainly Soundforge, Fruity Loops and Cool Edit Pro, the machine was barely capable of keeping up with their immense creative drive. During this time, they often resorted to Open Source tools on the Linux Operating system, like Csound, ECASound and raw programming to generate sounds and noise with often very random results.

Their style of preference during these early days was mainly glitch and drum 'n bass, inspired by artists such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher and even Sigue Sigue Sputnik. These early works resulted in their first CD, EeN, released by themselves in 2004. This release is in itself an interesting case study, as all of the music on the CD as well as the CD artwork are available as free downloads, allowing anyone to create their own CD. This is marketed as the “Please Pirate” campaign.

In 2004 Pelzer moved to Singapore, and started developing a more hard-edged industrial sound. He also started experimenting with vocals on most of the music. In 2005, while in Singapore, he created the NuL website, http://www.nul.com.sg, which acts as the central seeding point for all of NuL's music online. To date more than 14000 downloads have been registered on the website alone.

When Pelzer returned to South Africa in 2006, he found an overwhelming awareness of NuL, mainly as a result of his online endeavours whilst living in Singapore. Pelzer subsequently started NuL as a live show, together with Kruger and two new members, Mareli Minnaar and Dawid Kahts. The live show has been a huge success, and incorporates the energetic live video mixing of Niel de Lange. The number of fans is still growing with every gig, and NuL plans to grow its live show accordingly.
The second CD, Twee, has recently been released, and work has commenced on a third CD.

Combichrist
Rammstein
Aphex Twin
Autechre
Front242
NIN
Kraftwerk
Skinny Puppy
Einsturzende Neubaten
Frank Zappa
Tom Waits
Pink Floyd
Iron Maiden
Mr Bungle
John Zorn

Bangkok

Kurzweil K2000
Korg Mini Analog Monophonic (1973)
Warwick Bass
Ibanez Guitar