02.09.05
(MusicPortal.com)
Veteran experimental group
THE RESIDENTS will release their new album, "
Animal Lover," on March 21st via
Mute Recordings. When
Charles Darwin first proposed in the late 1800's that homo sapiens had evolved from and were in fact a species of animal, many humans were horrified. Humans suddenly had an unusual need to feel superior, something their fellow animal associates had never quite understood. When
Sigmund Freud destroyed the accepted opposition between sanity and madness by defining "normality" via a sliding scale a few years later, humans were even more shocked. Taking a step beyond Darwin, he believed that the human was an animal in conflict, and informing the human of that very simple concept seemed to only increase the conflict. In THE RESIDENTS' "Animal Lover," the creatures who don't really mind if they are animals take an existential look at the upright animal whose normality is sliding toward the wrong end of the spectrum. The human beasts live in a world of primal darkness, their heads forever stuck in the ground like frightened ostriches living in a constant murky dream state. In creating this picture book of animal tales, THE RESIDENTS wanted to include a soundtrack that related directly to the subject of "animal love." The result is an imaginative CD whose rhythm tracks are based entirely on animal noise mating patterns generated primarily by cicadas and frogs. Also the actual sounds of mating whales and humans were used for longer tonal passages. THE RESIDENTS are now entering their fourth decade as faceless "anti-stars," existing in the dim outskirts of mainstream awareness. During that entire time, they've consciously kept their origins and personal lives shrouded in mystery. The creation of this obviously contrived "mystery" was one of the first decisions they reached after realizing that they had become a group - something they define as an organism with a mind, will and direction of its own.
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