Marking it’s 40th anniversary this month is The Residents’ Tunes of Two Cities, which was issued in March of 1982. Though it was officially labeled “part two” of the infamous and unfinished Mole Trilogy, it does not technically constitute a continuation of the story begun by Mark of the Mole the previous year. The Residents considered it more of a prequel to Mark of the Mole and, rather than advancing the narrative, it seeks to illuminate the differences between the two cultures described in the story by presenting alternating examples of their popular music. In the case of the hedonistic, aquatic Chubs, the music is typified by a kind of mutant “jazz”. The industrious underground dwelling Mole music is, by contrast, expressed by more mechanically influenced hymns.
Technically, the album is notable for introducing the E-mu Emulator digital sampler into The Residents' production arsenal, one of the earliest commercially available keyboard samplers of its kind. This opened up a new vista of sounds for the band, though the primitive nature of the sampling technology of the time has tended to date recordings like this somewhat ungracefully. For many fans of the band, this album has become a demarcation point between their “golden era” and what has become known as their “digital decline”.
Personally, I have to agree that I much prefer the analogue classics that came before this. I largely gave up following their work after this release, though I have, in recent years, done some backtracking into some of their post “Mole” ‘80s releases and also enjoyed some of their more recent releases prior to the passing of Hardy Fox. This renewed interest was largely inspired by seeing them live on three separate occasions since 2011, experiences which renewed my appreciation for their craft.
