Rockbites: The Residents offer 'original soundtrack' to comp DVD

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The Residents offer 'original soundtrack' to comp DVD
6 November 2001

San Francisco experimental surrealist icons The Residents returned a few years ago with their first tour in nearly a decade, but have been releasing studio projects continuously since 1972 (and have been making music together since a few years before that). Their latest project is a DVD and companion CD both titled Icky Flix but containing mostly separate track listings.
    The DVD appeared back in January and contains 100 minutes of classic Residents strangeness along with four previously unreleased clips. It also includes video versions of all of their CD-ROM multimedia projects. The music on the DVD, while all older songs, is re-recorded and remastered—making it interesting even apart from the visuals, which brings us to the companion CD.
    In early September the band released for the US only a 15 track Icky Flix CD, billed as the 'original soundtrack' to the DVD but in fact not overlapping with that disc very much.
    Apart from the all-new opening and closing themes, the tracks on the CD are fresh re-workings of songs from throughout the band’s career. Not only does the new disc provide reinterpretations of such Residents classics as Songs For Swinging Larvae, The Cave, and Eloise; it offers by far the best audio quality of any of their releases. In fact, the wide-open and finely textured audio on Icky Flix provides a new dimension to The Residents phenomenon, and likely proves a bit of a revelation for longtime fans.
    From their genesis more than 30 years ago, The Residents have traveled a decidedly eccentric orbit around mainstream audiovisual entertainment. Icky Flix shows they’ve lost none of their vision, humor, or twistedness. The ever-anonymous collective probably deserves credit for inspiring a great deal of the 'alternative' in alternative music of all sorts over the years.
    Certainly not the mainstream market’s cup of tea, The Residents continue to provide an ever-evolving musical take on Monty Python’s tag line '...and now for something completely different.' Three bites out of five.

Rockbites ratings  5: life changing, 4: stunning, 3: captivating, 2: amusing, 1: annoying.

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