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Haeckel's Tale Cue 2
Strange Culture Cue 4
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THE RESIDENTS Strange Culture/Rivers of Hades/Haeckel's Tale

2CD album | gg215
Residents music from 2007: Strange Culture (OST): In 2007, Director/artist Lynn Hershman-Leeson heard of a strange situation of an artist being arrested as a bioterrorist due to the fact that his “art” used harmless mold. She gathered a number of friends to make a film to bring more attention to the artist’s plight. Among the friends were Tilda Swinton and The Residents who had worked with Ms Hershman on her previous film, Conceiving Ada. The Rivers of Hades: An aural art piece, Chaos Is Not Just A Theory, was written by The Residents in 2007 to accompany the release of The Residents toy figures designed by Steve Cerio. The sound installation was not included in the final gallery presentation, however, and the essence of the much larger project was reduced to this piece, The Rivers of Hades. Haeckel’s Tale: The Showtime Channel has a long running horror TV series, Masters of Horror. The season included a Clive Barker story, Haeckel’s Tale. Director, John McNaughton (Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer), was employed to oversee the project. McNaughton called in The Residents to score the film after having worked with them on a previous film, Condo Painting. For unknown reasons, the score was not used for the broadcast. Of these three 2007 projects overseen by Charles Bobuck, only The Rivers of Hades has been released on CDr in an extremely limited fan edition. This is the first release of Haeckel’s Tale and Strange Culture on CD. Tracklist: 1. Strange Culture (Six Film Cues) 2. Haeckel's Tale (Ten Film Cues) 3. Acheron 4. Cocytus 5. Lethe 6. Styx 7. Phlegeton. Price: € 23,-/copy incl worldwide shipping.

This two CD set brings together three soundtracks from The Residents- taking in both film sound tracking, and art installation soundtracks. (...) The soundtrack takes five tracks, and these have a running time between three & thirteen minutes- with a total running time of forty five minutes. The idea of the installation was to play of series of seemingly random music (in 5.1 surround audio) from 12 separate speakers- so as you can imagine the music here is quite lose, manic, shifting and (at-times) working against it self. Each track has a very free/ jam type feel, with percussive elements starting then stopping. It finds drifts & waves of gamelan moving together, through to plodding yet brooding synth sways. Moving onto sawing & seared electro texturing over ethno percussive backdrops. Through to big beat electronica blended with chugging guitar workings, through to taut soundtrack dwells, and beyond. At times some of the melodies that appear bring make memories of The Resident’s past work- whether this is deliberate, or just coincidence I’m not sure. Anyway as I whole I’d say this soundtrack is the most experimental/ Resident’s like of the three soundtracks here, it’s also very lose & jam like too…so really you’ve got to like The Residents at the least controlled, and in a purely instrumental setting. For me I find mostly it’s a splendid bit of sonic ‘n’ shifting chaos from the project, and I think it would have perfectly fitted the subversive edges of Mr Cerios work.
(Musique Machine, September 2016)