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.