Sloucho's Full Review: Eskimo [Remaster] by Residents
Background Information Concerning the Band
In chapter two of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, a band named the Paranoids shows up to party in a hotel with the two co-executors of Pierce Inverarity’s estate. It’s a shame Pynchon didn’t think to call the band the Residents, for that band would have made a perfect addition to the book—their giant eyeball masks serving as a reminder of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon and the paranoia that the Benthamesque structure is designed to create.
But even if Pynchon wasn’t thinking of the Residents, they have certainly been thinking of him (probably since they moved from Shreveport, Louisiana to San Francisco in the early ‘70s, when they were compared, for no good reason, to Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart). Included with their remastered CDs (available through East Side Digital Studios) is a postcard; and in the place reserved for the stamp is the image most famously associated with Pynchon’s WASTE delivery system in Lot 49: the muted trumpet.
One can’t help suspecting, as one listens to Eskimo, that if the postcard included with the CD were dropped in a receptacle labeled ‘waste,’ it would make its way to the studio address. The music of Eskimo has just that kind of eerie, imagination-encouraging effect on the listener.
The Residents weren’t named by Pynchon, but they were named in a Pynchonesque way. When their first demo tape was returned from Warner Brothers Records, it was addressed simply to “The Residents.” That’s what they’ve called themselves ever since—the very arbitrariness of the name amplified by the shrouded identities of the musicians (reminiscent, of course, of Pynchon’s own legendary reclusiveness). The Residents are a band, but not a spectacle. They ordinarily appear in tuxedos and top hats wearing giant eyeball masks. To look at them is to appreciate oneself as the object of the gaze; what we ordinarily think of as the spectacle (the band) has become the spectator. The band members have been reduced to the visual organ, scrutinizing the audience with a metaphorical ostentation that should help to remind the audience of what it means to be an audience.
Now for the CD
Eskimo is a very strange album. For the most part, it sounds like it is trying to be ambient music. A casual listener might believe that it really is the music of the arctic played, as the liner notes suggest, on a kooa (“a plucked string instrument made of seal gut stretched over a dog skull sounding board”), a pooeye (“a three to five note flute made from hollowed whale or walrus bone”), a sedrak (“a tuned percussive instrument made of walrus and whale ribs which are struck with bones or frozen fish”), and such drums as the segook, the anorak, the ooluksak, and the atseak. In truth, however, the instruments do less to establish the polar mood of the album than the sound of the frozen wind that blows from one track into the next.
But if the Residents manage to persuade us, with their first track, that they are actually recording Eskimo musicians during a walrus hunt, then they also convince us that the Eskimo people are tremendous fans of King Crimson, John Cage, Laurie Anderson, and Arnold Schoenberg. Also, by the middle of track 3 (“Arctic Hysteria”), we must suspect that some wily Eskimo descendant of Les Paul has managed to build an electric kooa (or at least figured out how to get feedback from a pooeye).
There is a good deal of comedy on Eskimo. The funniest part may be the ‘ookie-wookie’ chant at the beginning of track 4 (“The Angry Angakok”). Then there are the senselessly protracted drum parts in the middle of some songs that are bound to put the listener in mind of the bizarre synthetic percussive padding of a Joe Walsh single.
Each track is meant, with the assistance of the liner notes, to tell a story. The best story, in my opinion, is that of track 5 (“A Spirit Steals a Child”):
One of the many strange Eskimo phenonmena is the disappearance of children. . . . Eskimo mythology speaks of children being stolen by the spirit of the Weeping Seal, which is half seal and half woman, and who, because she can have no children, must steal any she finds unguarded.
Pop! the bladders went. Hunting season had been good and there were many bladders to burst. The band played gleefully, eager to get to the next peak in the music so all could explode the inflated bladders of the creatures which had fed and clothed the Eskimo all year. Finally, the music ended and everyone immediately ran toward the sea, eager to throw the burst bladders through a hole in the ice so the souls of the animals could return to the sea and be caught again next year.
Because of the excitement, an important Eskimo rule had been broken. A child had been left unattended. Tears froze on his cheeks as he stood crying behind an igloo. Suddenly there was another sound in the wind. A whistle, a bark, a growling whine filled the air around the terrified child, whirling him around in a flurry of ice.
The Eskimos soon returned to discover that the child was missing, and realized the folly of their over excitement at the bladder festival. The Angakok started a chant to halt the fleeing spirit, but he knew the chant would only delay the spirit of the Weeping Seal’s complete takeover of the child. They would have to go to “the world beneath the world” and fight.
Several dog sleds sped away across the tundra, whips cracking at the barking dogs. On the lead sled the child’s father and the Angakok crouched, defending themselves against the blast of Arctic wind. The ride was long and tiring.
As they neared their destination, the men sang a chant and the Angakok spoke a spell. A dog which was brought before him was decapitated, and the head, still containing the dog spirit, was quickly taken down into the nether world, while the other dogs, smelling the spilled blood of their own kind, howled into the cold night. The Angakok raised the dog head into the air and called forth its spirit to battle the Weeping Seal and force it to return the stolen child.
The two spirits met and intertwined in the air. With the Northern Lights they danced and sang, and then they disappeared slowly as the men returned to their village in hopes that the child would be there.
If you think that little story contains its own resolution (as I do), then you will very probably enjoy the five other stories included on the CD. They are all carefully written and deserving of multiple readings. The tracks are long enough that each of the accompanying stories can be read over and over and savored as the music plays. Eskimo is much more than music to the ear: It is experience for the imagination.
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This is my belated contribution to the Pop Your Cherry Write Off hosted by Christoff and repulsemonkey. The purpose of the write off was for participants to expose themselves to unfamiliar music chosen by other participants in the write off. My cherry had the good fortune to be popped by Christoff, who hand-picked the Residents for my listening pleasure. Thanks Christoff; and thanks to everyone who participated:
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