The Residents
Not Available

LA RECENSIONE

After the hippy phase of Woodstock, the Seventies for the San Francisco area are synonymous with avant-garde, madness, and extremism. The Residents are not a band, they are not a project constructed at a table.

They, along with those pranksters from Devo, the uncontrolled anarchy of Pere Ubu, and the violence of Chrome and Suicide, complete the American picture in the best way. The various unthinkable and out-of-the-ordinary schemes of Zappa and Beefheart finally find companions. It is a stream of consciousness impossible to break and interrupt, where one reaches a conclusion that, in reality, does not exist.

Pure abstraction.

The right way to encounter such a proposition is to imagine a flux, similar to a film, where anything can happen and nothing is predetermined. So is it about fantasy or concrete sound? The Residents present themselves as apocalyptic prophets of the present and the future. The atonal, arrhythmic, amelodic structure of the compositions and the nasal, distorted, and monotonous vocal lines are their characteristic elements.

The first album, "Meet The Residents," which ironically "updates" the cover of "Meet The Beatles," is a mix of crazy ballets, fanfares, and mini-concerts for percussion, keyboards, and obscure chants. After this shock, in 1978 we arrive at the next saga of the planet Residents, namely the masterpiece "Not Available." This album, conceived in 1974, presents itself as the triumph of sound manipulation, so much so that it has been defined as a true phonetic experiment.

The obsessive tribal incipit of "Edweena" is immediately subdued by celestial synths and nonsensical nursery rhymes, which open a phantasmagoric scenario for the mind and ear. "The Making Of A Soul" is a jazz fanfare where threatening saxes, melancholic voices reciting subhuman streams of consciousness merge with surreal piano lines. After all this, one plunges into the general turmoil.

The last two compositions arrive to raise the peak of absurdity and madness. The colossal "Ship's A Going Down" is a macabre clamor of drunkards with background synthesized sounds and inconceivable sax orgies. "Never Known Question" is the definitive theater of the absurd: the croaking declamation accompanied by the synth motif is slowly absorbed by the epic symphonism of the finale.

Thus, the conception of the Residents exists in symbolizing man's catastrophic condition, passing music through all phases of historical time and space. They seek to explore the spoken word as much as possible, imagining absurd grafts of free jazz sax with synthetic keyboard lines.

From their philosophy emerges an unstoppable cosmic pessimism, where man sinks helplessly into the pain of alienation. All this, however, is explained with an original irony, almost mockery, that draws imaginary shores as a solution to existence. The career certainly does not end here: we find the collage of "Third Reich And Roll" (1975), the futurism of "Fingerprince" (1976), the short compositions of "Duck Stab" (1978), the visionary glacial concept about eskimos of "Eskimo" (1979), and the sketches of "Commercial Album" (1980).