Author Topic: FINEST FLOWERS ALBUM CLUB #3: XXX Residents - Attack of the Killer Black Eyeball  (Read 649 times)

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Meisekimiu

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XXX Residents - Attack of the Killer Black Eyeball


Album Title: Attack of the Killer Black Eyeball
Artist: XXX Residents
Release Year: 2009

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.jp | Tower Records (JP only)
(I don't usually explicitly say this but... you may be able to listen to some songs on Youtube if you find them)

Alright, enough of the safe Ralph selections for our album club! Time to get a bit more crazy... and yet still definitely Residential. Obviously this isn't an actual Residents album so it'll never be Project of the Week, so let's discuss it here!

Have you heard of this strange Japanese Residents remix album before? If not, why not try giving it a listen? It might not exactly be the kind of music most people who come to a Residents forum are exactly searching for, but hey, it's easier to tap your foot to this than the wind.


Do you have a recommendation for the next Fine Flower we should discuss? Private message me the album info as well as your own introduction to the album and maybe it'll be the next one we talk about?!
« Last Edit: March 14, 2018, 11:14:55 pm by Meisekimiu »
レジデンツはほとんど日本人だけど、誰も知らない。

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ADeadlyFriend

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Certainly looks interesting. Makes me wonder what kind of following the Rezzies have in Japan.
"We are only equal in the grave and in the dark," said a man whose head was halfway eaten by a shark.

Meisekimiu

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I don't really like cover bands. I'd say that the only cover band I've consistently liked is The Residents as Randy, Chuck, and Bob. And they're only technically a cover band if you follow The Residents' own strange truths and half truths they put out about their works. I get why cover bands exist, and I get why they make money. I look at bands I like and wish to become them, and I realize that the only way to ever go to a Beatles concert ever again is through the fake British accents of Beatles cover bands.

Still, something seems... wrong about sort of "stealing" a band's identity and performing their music live as them. When it comes to XXX Residents, I'm a bit more conflicted. On one hand, they aren't really a cover band. But on the other hand, they do perform live occasionally and as such market themselves as a "cosplay band". I guess to me it is just a bit too strange to see the eyeball headed Resident figures standing behind turntables and making techno trance music. Though I do have to say it definitely does seem "residential" to bring a vacuum cleaner up on stage and remix that sound.

Attack of the Killer Black Eyeball is XXX Residents' only album currently. Unlike The Residents, they do not perform original avant-garde music, but instead produce techno remixes of Residents music. I know for a fact that many pretentious fans of The Residents would scoff at the idea at a serious techno remix (Diskomo 2000 was "ironic" so it is allowed to exist of course). But I'm always open to new music, and hey, how "normal" can a Residents remix album really sound, especially when it's produced by some weird Japanese people? I picked up this album last year along with The Ghost of Hope in the Tower Records in Shibuya and was super excited to listen to it when I got home. Unlike The Ghost of Hope which I needed to listen to immediately, I waited until I was back in the US to properly listen to this one.

I popped it in like a normal Residents album and really made an effort of actually listening to it... and I was pretty disappointed. It really is just a normal techno remix album. The songs drone on for quite a while, with the occasional familiar Residents sample being thrown into the song. I put the album away and thought "well, at least it is a rare oddity" and that was that.

I think a few months later I ripped the CD and gave it a listen while I was doing some work on the computer. I just needed some background music and... wow, the album was suddenly much better! It really does need to be approached with the standard mindset that goes into listening to more mainstream electronic music: you don't just sit there and listen to it. It's club music. You put it on and let it be the background music to whatever you're doing. You dance to it in the club. You drink and get high to it, but not even the pretentious spiritual type of high, just the "gotta have fun!" kind of drugs (note: I don't do drugs so if that sounds naive, then, well, there you go). I think I could give this album to my friends and they'd still think it's weird, but it is very close to just being normal techno/EDM/electronic/whatever music. I don't know the differences in the genres to properly label what this is.

The standout track from this album is "Harsh Noise For Hotel Missy Kyoto". Unlike all the other tracks, it isn't really part of the whole techno megamix this album has going on. It's pretty much just a weird cover of "Serenade for Missy", although I still feel like it samples the original quite a bit and just overlays a new texture over top of it. Everything else on the album really is just a techno song that samples and remixes a Residents song, all of the remixes being their older works. The Census Taker is the latest work sampled in these albums to my knowledge, and a lot of Duck Stab/Buster & Glen and Fingerprince are sampled. It's pretty disappointing, since when it comes to remixed Residents music (outside of any RMX projects which... are pretty much new things instead of remixes in my view) I'm more interested in the later parts of The Residents' catalogue. For some reason I think Tweedles would be an excellent candidate for Techno-ification, though I'm not entirely sure why.

That's about all I have to say about this album. It's not a good album to really listen to, but I do enjoy putting it on in the background occasionally. I'm not really a big fan of just straight up techno music you'd play in a club, so I wasn't really predisposed to like this album much to begin with. Still, it's fun to hear music like this and be able to actually sing along to these samples which are pretty engrained into my mind at this point. It is a really interesting oddity, and as a computer programmer who likes to fill 8 hours of work every day with background music, droning electronic music like this really can be a blessing sometimes. And if I had to choose any droning electronic music, I really would prefer that electronic music to be vaguely Residential.
レジデンツはほとんど日本人だけど、誰も知らない。