The Residents: Eskimo (2LP, pREServed edition) [NEW RALPH]

Why you'll love it

This pREServed 2LP set remasters the album from the original tapes and adds a full LP of extras, including the ICE RDX suite and early "Diskomo" takes. Spin's alternative guide called Eskimo "the Residents' zenith."

This edition

• 2LP set
• pREServed edition
• Remastered from the original tapes
• Bonus LP of multitracks, demos and rehearsals
• Stereo mix

About the album

The Residents presented Eskimo, with a perfectly straight face, as a document of Arctic life. It isn't, of course; the stories are deliberately absurd fictions, the chanting mixes gibberish with commercial slogans, and the joke is squarely on anyone who thinks a record can sum up a culture. Planned as the follow-up to 1977's Fingerprince, it finally arrived in 1979 on Ralph Records.

They recorded it between 1976 and 1979 on homemade instruments against a wall of wind-like synthesizers, with Snakefinger on guitar, Chris Cutler on percussion and Don Preston on synths. "The Walrus Hunt," "Birth" and "Arctic Hysteria" each pair the music with a short, deadpan story, and "The Festival of Death" fills most of a side. The bonus LP opens up the multitrack tapes and adds "Kenya," "Scottish Rhapsody" and rehearsals from 1982.

A disco remix, Diskomo, followed in 1980 and was later covered by the Belgian new beat group L&O. A record with a wind machine as its lead instrument is, we'd argue, the original ambient album, if you squint and turn the heating down.

Also at Kops: more The Residents on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On New Ralph Too / Cherry Red (cat# NRTLP008D), a reissue of the 1979 album.