The Residents – Hello Skinny (featuring Les Claypool)
Description
2015–present
Following the departure of Hardy Fox in 2015, Eric Drew Feldman was once again asked to help with duties previously undertaken by Fox. Along with Feldman, performers Laurie Hall and Peter Whitehead began appearing on Residents releases starting with The Ghost of Hope. Hall also appeared on Intruders, which introduced Sivan Lioncub.
The line-up of collaborators as featured on the Residents’ 2020 album Metal Meat & Bone includes Eric Drew Feldman, Carla Fabrizio, Nolan Cook, Peter Whitehead, and Sivan Lioncub. Their 2022 Triple Trouble soundtrack album features Eric Drew Feldman as co-writer, co-arranger and co-producer along with The Residents; Feldman is the only credited musical collaborator on this release.
Artistry
Musical style
The Residents’ albums generally fall into two categories: deconstructions of Western popular music, and complex conceptual pieces composed around a theme, theory or plot. The group is noted for surrealistic lyrics and sound, with a disregard for conventional music composition. The Residents’ musical style encompasses art rock, art pop, avant-pop, avant-rock, electronic, industrial, dark ambient, ambient, electronica, industrial dance, talking blues, alternative rock, noise rock and post-punk. The Residents have been described as pioneers of punk rock, art rock and techno.
Influences
The Residents have claimed to have been influenced by N. Senada (which may be a play on Ensenada, en se nada meaning “in himself nothing,” no sé nada meaning “I don’t know anything” or enseñada, a form of the past participle meaning “taught”), who they alleged was a Bavarian composer and music theorist who formulated the “Theory of Obscurity” and the “Theory of Phonetic Organization”. His “Theory of Obscurity” states that an artist can only produce pure art when the expectations and influences of the outside world are not taken into consideration; while his “Theory of Phonetic Organization” states, “the musician should put the sounds first, building the music up from [them] rather than developing the music, then working down to the sounds that make it up.”
There is a debate as to whether or not Senada, supposedly having been born in 1907 and dying in 1993 at the age of 86, actually existed, or was simply an invention of the Residents. It is frequently speculated that, if real, N. Senada may have been the famous avant-garde composer and instrument designer Harry Partch, the influence of whose work may be heard in Residents compositions such as “Six Things to a Cycle“; his death is also referenced in the song “Death in Barstow“. Another rumor speculates that N. Senada may have been Captain Beefheart, because in the late 1960s Beefheart and his “Magic Band” lived in a residence on Ensenada Drive in Woodland Hills, California, while recording Trout Mask Replica and Safe as Milk; Beefheart’s influence can also be heard in early Residents works. The Residents also sent an early demo tape to the Warner Brothers executive Hal Halverstadt, who had signed Beefheart.
According to the Residents, in 1937, N. Senada premiered his masterpiece, Pollex Christi, which means either Thumb of Christ or Big Toe of Christ. This work mainly consisted of borrowed pieces from other composers, namely Beethoven‘s Symphony No. 5 and Carl Orff‘s Carmina Burana, among others. He also left large holes in the work so that the performers could insert music of their choosing, thus “becoming composers themselves”. Senada justified his work with “house” analogies claiming that he did not make the “bricks” but “cemented them together”; he was not the “architect”, just the “builder”. N. Senada allegedly collaborated with the Residents on their work prior to Santa Dog and Meet the Residents, and then disappeared. He resurfaced in the mid-1970s, returning from an Arctic expedition and bearing a sealed bottle of pure Arctic air; this served as inspiration for the Eskimo project.
