As we discovered in The Godfather, there are offers one cannot refuse. In the fall of 2005 The Residents got such an offer.
A young gentleman in Romania had built himself a state of the art recording studio and had the wild dream of asking his favorite band, The Residents to try it out. As it happened, The Residents' own studio was undergoing a process known as seismic upgrade. In other words, strengthening the building to withstand a major earthquake. The group could not use the facility for a year.
Fate had again stepped in and The Residents saw no reason not to have a look at the studio. The group boarded a jet for Bucharest in early 2006 with the idea of recording a couple of tracks while taking a nice vacation in a country they had never visited. Since no ideas had been formed in advance as to what would be recorded, they felt it was appropriate to record everything during the trip, including the jet's take off.
However, once on the plane and bored, ideas started coming and soon The Residents were roughing out an idea for a whole album.
The group understood that their ultimate destination was not Bucharest, but a town 400 kilometers away, Hunedoara. Hunedoara was in the area of Romania known as Transylvania, historically the home of Count Vlad III, fictionalized by Bram Stoker as the vampire Dracula. Count Vlad III had even been imprisoned in Hunedoara for seven years. By the time they landed in Bucharest, they had outlined an album about a "vampire" of sorts. Not a Bela Lugosi vampire, but one that feasted on broken hearts; a man who devoured the romantic emotions of others as a source of power. A man who took the stance that anyone who would stoop so low as to love him was not worth loving in return.
As it turned out, the group fell in love with Hunedoara and as they produced their story of sexual compulsion, their impromptu recordings of street musicians, church bells and a small traveling circus soon made it into their electronic pieces. The circus had especially captured their attention with its strong Felliniesque presence. Additionally, The Residents product manager at Mute happened to be Romanian and he had connections with classical musicians in Bucharest. As a result, The Film Orchestra of Bucharest interpreted some of the group's electronic compositions and these recordings were also integrated into the new work.
These compositions tended to focus less on harmonics and melody than their previous effort, Animal Lover, and could only be described as a patchwork of new and often exotic textures. For the group, this patchwork was the reflection of an often chaotic, but uniquely immersive experience.
Very very new from The Residents, TWEEDLES.
