Residents – “Demons Dance Alone” DVD The Residents have always been like that weird-ass uncle that the family rarely talks about, but who shows up unexpectedly at certain family functions and makes a nuisance of himself. They’ve always transcended any genre considerations, and having hovered around for three decades that is true more so today than ever. They have, mostly, kept their identities a secret while exploring the most theatrical aspects of their music. The most prominent image is of the band wearing tuxedos and giant eyeball heads while sounding like a circus freak show of art students on seriously bad acid. This experimental performance DVD breaks with tradition by involving the cameraperson, who freely roams the stage wearing a steadicam and interacting with the band. They shot fifteen hours of footage while flooding the stage with infrared light and used the camera’s night mode. Then they tweaked the resulting footage with numerous digital video effects which gives a lot of it a bizarre glow, and a soft texture, creating an almost animated-looking image. The military- BDU costuming and characters are unlike anything they’ve done before. The songs themselves are mostly newer compositions written following the events of 9-11 (“Caring”, “Honey Bear”, “Life Would Be Wonderful”). They move closer to conventional song structure on some of the material, and incorporate a female vocalist, but never abandon the over-the-top weirdness for normalcy, thank God. Anthony @ www.musicvideodistributors.com |
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