What does /mu/ think of The Residents?

>>62060213
They're awesome. Meet The Residents is one of my favs. I actually like it a bit better than Not Available, which will give me the pleb label.

smart people who make unlistenable but clever music

>>62060213
never listened to them they got a shit ton of albums
any flowchart available?

>>62061843
Eskimos better tho

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>>62061779
Save it friend it's all yours

>>62061843
all of these albums are as good as each other

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just picked up that album OP, what am I in for?

>>62060213
One of the few bands that actually make me feel uncomfortable. Like, when I listen to them, something just feels...off...

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>>62061843
Mark of the Mole is the worst of the Mole trilogy though
Not Available is my favorite.

This is my favorite of their "new" stuff

>>62061894
>more stories about lust and rape
>Tweedles!
Tweedles doesn't have any stories about rape in it...

>>62060213
Anybody seen Theory of Obscurity? Or know where I can watch it? So far I have only seen it showing up at film festivals

>>62060213
the ResidentSleepers

>>62064807
Just wait a bit. Independent movies usually do that before doing their actual theatrical run.

God in Three Persons is easily one of their best, any Residents fan who hasn't heard it should immediately

>>62062648
nice!!!! legit great vaporwavey doowop album. I seriously love the california raisins so much. Maybe more than I love the residents.

>>62064807
The blu-ray and dvd is out now

>>62065584
link?

>>62065584
where?
can i download it from somewhere, free or not, or there is only fisical media?

>>62065584
is it? I feel like I would have heard about that, I check their sites regularly and I haven't seen anything

How about the main music writer leaving the band to do solo stuff at near 70 years old?

Is there some kind of drama going on? Why wouldn't he keep writing music for them?

regardless I feel like their best stuff is when they have guest musicians, I feel like bobuck is pretty stuck on dark amelodic rhythm music. I'd love a pop album like Demons again and supossedly they got a new album coming this year so we'll see who writes the music.

I always had a theory that Randy wrote the music on Patmos just because it sounded pretty amateur and had several technical mistakes.

I've only listened to Meet the Residents so far but I'm hooked

Eskimo is GOAT. Truly something special
God in three Persons is creepy and cool and weirdly charming
Not Available is kind of sad and beautiful in places but is pretty shitty
Meet the Residents its retarded and bad

That's my opinion of all the stuff I've listened to of theirs.

>>62066602
Hmm I've never met a residents fan who didn't like their first--why don't you like it?

Also why don't you like Not Available?

>>62066741
I find their first really tedious. I think it aims for some kind of deconstruction of pop music, but in an uninteresting, dumb way
Not Available is hard for me to assess because there are elements I really like in there but it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth for some reason. I'll give it another go now

only listened to Not Available and loved it

did I fuck up by listening to their best album first? :(

>>62066915
that "bad taste" for me is just part of the residents. They're a hard pill to swallow sometimes and they kind of leave a bitter after taste. But that's something I really like about them that I've grown to enjoy over time. They really aren't for everybody and they require a lot of patience.

I just listened to their first album and it's probably one of the greatest things i've ever heard. Where should I go next?

>>62067036
Definitely give Eskimo a go, my man. It moves me big time

>>62067036
No, literally every album is totally different for the first 30 years. I wouldn't even say it's their best. I say start with Meet the.. and go forward chronologically.

I listened in order of what my dad had on CD but since you have no structure to what's available there really isn't any reason to just listen to it all in order.

Essential res albums in no order:

Meet The Residents
The Commercial Album (on spotify)
Not Available
Fingerprince/Duckstab are very similar but both great
Eskimo
God in 3 Persons
Mark of the Mole
Demons Dance Alone

>>62067081

Eskimo can be hard to recommend just because it's one of their few soundscape albums and lacks a lot of more traditional music qualities. Don't get me wrong, it's great, but I think to fully appreciate it you should have a better grasp on the Residents as a pop band first >>62067130

>>62067179
Yeah but I'm recommending it because it was their next development from Not Available. Its a sequel to it in some ways. With its quasi-narrative and emphasis on atmosphere

>>62067179
Eskimo seems like a better ambient/soundscape album than other residents' albums are weirdo-pop albums, by which token I'd say Eskimo should be more accessible to people that aren't plebs than their other stuff, which just seems kinda weird-for-weird's-sake

>>62067343
I think my problem with a lot of their other stuff is that they try to implement comedy in ways that can seem wonky. Eskimo has elements of comedy too with its little voices, but it fits really well with the rest of the work. In a lot of their stuff, Not Available included, they put on purposefully grating Americana joke-voices that SHOULD gel with the atonality, but it doesn't really work for me.

Often they use it to create a bittersweet nature by contrasting silly voices with dark and strange music but its rarely worked, except possibly on God in Three Persons

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>>62066251
>>62065653
>>62065634

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Residents-Theory-Obscurity-Blu-Ray/dp/B0193UZ2BE/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1453935137&sr=1-2&keywords=theory+of+obscurity

>>62067624
I see where you're coming from but that stuff doesn't even phase me. Another good example of comedy (?) is all of the advertisements hidden in the chants of eskimo

>>62067343
>>62067302
those are both good points so yeah if you're not a pleb eskimo isn't a bad place to start. I still think you'd enjoy it better if you had a grasp on their more "normal" stuff though.

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>>62066315

why are their new album covers so, so, so bad?

>>62061894
Your flow chart is missing "The Residents Play The Beatles Play The Residents".

I'm sure more than one person is going to point out that the reason is that side one is just a sound collage of Beatles' songs and sound bites, while side two is just a cover of "Flying", but if that's the case, why exclude this record while you include The Residents covering The Rolling Stones? (And don't tell me it's because the Rolling Stones cover doesn't sound like The Rolling Stones while The Beatles sound like The Beatles. That's a cop out answer)

>>62069427
The above poster makes a good point since Third Reich and Roll is nothing but covers as well.

>>62069427
that's a pretty obscure single, I can see why they left it off

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX4ykn1a-y8

bumping with an underrated new wave electronic pastoral lounge jazz keyboard noise album

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This Randy, Chuck and Bob thing is the worst thing to happen to The Residents both musically and conceptually. It's such a shame that a band like The Residents could be this uninspiring and boring. Discuss.

>>62070408
yeah I liked the first tour but to do consecutive tours almost exactly the same is kind of disappointing from them. The music part was just... bad. Like atmospheric rhythms with 1980's guitar licks. They only did covers but made no effort to recapture any semblance of the music of the originals, no chords, no melodies, just rhythms with guitar and randy yelling the lyrics.

>>62066315
as I said up here though the music man quit for some reason, and Randy says they're putting out a new album so perhaps it will be a return to better music with other people writing it?

>>62070603
>>62070408
>>62069233
the music man's album covers are really really bad most of the time too

I really hope they get a group of musicians together like they did for Demons or Wormwood and write some crazy jazzy pop music with Flynn's great ability to write spooky vague lyrics

>>62070603
>>62070408
like they're fortieth anniversary tour was the second part of a three part series. Like why wouldn't they make it it's own thing? bring out the eyeballs? get a big band with horns and guitars and real drums? big sets?

as opposed to inflatable christmas stuff a 1980's shredder guitarist and a guy playing garageband loops in boring costumes

>>62070408
it's sad to me that they seem to be ending their careers with something so tame. I really hope they put out a new record that's more like demons or wormwood or fingerprince where it's very loose conceptually but well written but super strange pop music. they need to go out with a bang

I wish there was a better place to discuss the residents. almost everyone on mu has just heard their debut and Not Available since that's what Scaruffi likes. I need someone to talk about the deep cuts and their new stuff about.

So what about their more recent work? I'm going to see them in about a week.

>>62071808
see
>>62070603
>>62070408
>>62070733
it'll still be a cool show but it's nothing like any of their previous stuff