THE GINGERBREAD MAN Liner Notes
About The Residents
The Residents are an anonymous group of artists based in
San Francisco who are primarily known for the creation of
experimental music, performance, and video. In slightly
more than two decades, they have released over 20 albums of
recorded music, toured the United States, Europe,
Australia, and Japan with three different performance
pieces, and have been credited with the invention of a new
art form, the music video. The creative output of the group
has steadfastly defied categorization, but has always been
marked by a consistent vision that is at once both
mysterious and disturbing.
Exploring The Residents' Gingerbread Man
Welcome to a
mind-bending study of nine characters created by the
legendary Residents and innovative ION.
About the Disc
The Residents' Gingerbread Man is a unique hybrid Compact
Disc that actually combines two types of digital data on
the same disc. One set of data exists on track 1 of the CD
and is specifically meant to be used with a properly
configured computer and CD-ROM drive. This is referred to
as The Expanded Album (TM) version of the disc. The other
set of data utilizes tracks 2 - 11 and provides
approximately 37 minutes of standard Redbook Audio that can
be played on any CD-Audio player. This is the complete
Gingerbread Man album and is referred to as the audio only
version of the disc.
A Cryptic Perspective
The one thing that appears certain is that The Residents'
Gingerbread Man is, at its core, simply the latest
Residents album. It just so happens that the album is a CD,
but that's fine, because The Residents were making albums
long before there were CDs. Pushing and tugging at the edge
of technology is always the case with The Residents, so it
seems fitting that not only is this an album that's a CD,
but it's a CD that's both a CD-Audio and a CD-ROM on the
same disc. In either format you are provided access to the
lives of 9 distinctively different characters who seemingly
have little in common. Little in common, that is, except
for the presence of the Gingerbread Man in each of them.
It's been suggested that if you listen carefully, you can
pick out the haunting theme of The Residents' Gingerbread
Man that pervasively weaves through each character's song.