Mull It Over 007: How To Completely Disappear
Artist Chris Molloy embarks on a seven day journey to record an album of music, attempting a zero carbon footprint in the process.
Chris Molloy, behind perhaps the most fabulously named alias in music - ’The Zang!’, has gifted the world an experimental film essay documenting his journey of recording an album of music, while significantly limiting his carbon footprint. No food, no travel, no social media, Chris’ documentary is a fifteen minute dreamscape; the results are breathtaking.
Filmed over a seven day period we follow Chris as he begins his fast. A disclaimer is displayed before the film begins advising the viewer to seek medical advice before undertaking extreme dietary changes. It is nice, I suppose, to be warned before you find yourself watching, what at times feels like the beginning of somebody's descent into madness. Instead though, we find ourselves on an uneasy ascent to enlightenment.
In truth, I expected perhaps a quick-fire behind the scenes documentary of a musician struggling to record music over seven days, hindered by a lack of food and other self imposed limitations. However, although the physical achievements of what Chris undertook here cannot be understated, the results sit firmly in the emotional.
I was battling with the concept of whether I can leave the world in a better way than I came into it, especially in relation to my children. Are we all destined for a legacy of consumption and consumerism?
Themes present in How To Completely Disappear span the environment, parenthood, materialism and musicality. As the short fifteen minute runtime elapses, the emotional register moves from concerned to contemplative. Cut with beautiful cinematography, it is a nod to the films potency that at times I found myself transfixed, belief suspended, only to nip back to reality with the emotional pull of a shot of a baby’s foot or an austere frame of a plate of water. It can be powerful stuff, that which is too oft discarded as mundane. I remind myself how glad I am that this is no mere fifteen minute version of ‘Behind The Music’.
So what about the music? There are shots of Chris’s home studio and considered close-up frames of condenser microphones and crash cymbals when you start to forget what the end goal is here (is recording the album really the goal?). That is all, really, we get in terms of allusions to the album’s recording, until we hit the ten minute mark. At ten minutes the audience is treated to a snippet of a song obviously written and recorded during the seven week process. It sounds like it came right off a Cat Stevens Greatest Hits collection. We only hear it for a couple of minutes, but with a film length of fifteen, this short musical interlude provides the perfect middle eight to the light yet emotional scenes that have preceded. I do hope to hear the full version sometime.
And I do hope he finished the album.
Chris Molloy’s film How To Completely Disappear has been selected for the New York Tri-State Film Festival.
To watch the film, check the link above and reach out to Chris on his social media below:
Instagram - (@)chrismolloyinspace, (@)chrismolloyfilm
And for something completely different I have added Drugs by Chris’s music project The Zang! to the Mull It Over playlist, which you can listen to below.
Thanks for reading Issue 007 of Mull It Over. Next up is the Cool Gig Guide for March ‘24!