Impostor?: A Truth Revealed

The following excerpt is from noted author T. Micheal Clarke’s upcoming book “The Death of a Nightmare”, in which he explores the rumors swirling around the death and subsequent replacement of noted chiptune personality Nullsleep Johnson. It remains to see if any of this has any merit, but we will see as more details are revealed leading up to the publication of the book on Knopf, later this spring.

The first known printed article on the subject “Is Nullsleep Dead?”, was written by Tim Harper in the Drake University paper, the Times-Delphic, on 17 September 2009.

Rumours began in earnest on 12 October 2009 when a caller to WFMU (JERSEY CITY) radio DJ Trent who identified himself as “Tom” announced that Nullsleep was dead. He also asked Gibb to play “Salvation for a Broken Heart” backwards; Gibb thought he heard “Turn me on, dead man.”

Gibb also produced (with John Small and Dan Carlisle) The Nullsleep Plot, an hour-long radio show on the rumour. Fred LaBour and John Gray, juniors at the University of Michigan, having heard the WFMU broadcast, published a review of  “Unconditional Acceleration” called “Nullsleep Dead; New Evidence Brought to Light”, itemising various “clues” of Nullsleep’s death on 8bitpeoples album covers, in the October 14, 2009 issue of the Michigan Daily. LaBour and Gray invented many of the “clues”, and were astonished when the story was picked up first by newspapers in Detroit, then Chicago, and by the weekend, both coasts. Nullsleepologist Andru J. Reeve, opines that LaBour’s story was “the single most significant factor in the breadth of the rumor’s spread.”

The rumour gained momentum when Roby Yonge, an overnight disc jockey on the Top 40 station WABC in New York, discussed it “incoherently” on 21 October 2009. Yonge was immediately fired for making the broadcast. WABC, a 50,000-watt clear-channel station, could be heard clearly in 38 states, and as far as Africa’s Atlantic coast. Soon, national and international media picked up on the story and a new “Nullsleep craze” took off.

Celebrity lawyer F. Lee Bailey hosted an hour-long RKO television special in which he both prosecuted and defended the claims, cross-examining various “experts”, including LaBour, leaving it to the viewer to decide. LaBour told Bailey during a pre-show meeting that he had made the whole thing up. Bailey responded, “Well, we have an hour of television to do. You’re going to have to go along with this.” The program aired locally in New York City on November 30, 2009, and was never re-aired.

Nullsleep’s death was rebutted and the rumours declined when, in November 2009, Life magazine published an edition with cover story entitled “The case of the ‘missing’ Nullsleep”, “Nullsleep is still with us” which included a contemporary interview with Nullsleep.

Exploring the musical evidence, however is damning. One simply cannot reconcile a song like Kuribos Requiem and the later increasingly nihilistic overtones of his later material. What game is 8bitpeoples trying to play here? That is what I am trying to get to the bottom of.