THE RESIDENTS - ESKIMO @45

 

Marking its 45th anniversary today is the sixth studio LP from those mysterious masked music makers, The Residents, with their epic masterpiece, Eskimo, being released on September 26th, 1979. It's an album that would indelibly define the iconography of the group, while demonstrating their conceptual depth to a degree never previously achieved, and rarely match afterwards.

The background of Eskimo's genesis is shrouded by a combination of deliberate misinformation, myth and hearsay, with only fragments of the story seeming to have any firm basis in actual historical fact. Even the concept itself, while superficially intended to function as anthropological documentation, is in reality only conjecture based on cultural ignorance and stereotyping. This is a deliberate commentary on how British & European cultural imperialism has chosen to misrepresent indigenous peoples over the centuries. The album's themes and stories are all built on either popular misconceptions of Inuit culture and life, or outright fabrications, informed by consumerist archetypes and slogans. In that sense, the project is a deft commentary on how aboriginal culture has been distorted and appropriated by colonialist interlopers.

According to the group's internal mythologizing, the initial idea for the album came into consideration sometime in 1976, shortly after completing Third Reich 'N Roll, when the group's mysterious mentor, the enigmatic N. Senada. He had reappeared after going missing for a year, vanishing in the middle of the ill-fated Vileness Fats film project. He had apparently gone to the far north, returning with recordings of Arctic wind and a jar of air, and an inspiration for capturing the culture of the native peoples in song and stories. Given the group's penchant for fictionalizing their existence and history, trying to decipher the true instigation of the idea might be a little difficult. I can't be sure N. Senada even existed as a real person. Yet it is at least reasonable to accept that the idea for the album does, in fact, date to the period suggested.

What also seems to be believable, albeit with the specifics still being in question, is that the project became a beast for the group to tackle. It has been said that one critical reason for it taking 3 years to manifest is the fact that the technology for creating the album simply didn't exist at the time it was conceived, necessitating the group inventing instruments and techniques in order to achieve the desired results. Synthesizers were just beginning to become affordable for the average artist, and sampling was still a few years away from practical implementation. The conceptual complexity of the work, and its need to be a fully integrated and coherent expression, inevitably resulted in strained relationships within the collective, as various contributors held on to convictions that didn't always align with others. The brutal intricacy of it all put everyone involved into a state of high stress and exasperation as the project dragged on.

It's no wonder then that the group would have to let off some steam by indulging in some creativity unburdened by excessive conceptual constraints. Concurrent with the production of Eskimo, The Residents would release the Fingerprince LP (1977), and two EPs, which would quickly become combined into a single album known as Duck Stab / Buster and Glen (1978). Additionally, the Satisfaction single would see a reissue, spurred on by the success of DEVO's cover of the same song, and the Not Available album, recorded in 1974 immediately after Meet the Residents and intended to be an expression of the "theory of obscurity" by never being actually released, would be reluctantly issued as a stopgap while Eskimo's release kept getting delayed. According to the band's biographers, these latter releases caused conflicts between the band and their "management", the Cryptic Corporation, but given that those entities were, in reality, the same people, I can only assume what that means is that not everyone was in agreement with these titles coming to press when they did, further straining relationships within the group. There are even rumours of the "band" disappearing with the Eskimo master tapes in protest, requiring negotiations within the organization. Perhaps some faction did indeed take a powder with the masters, but all of this may simply be apocryphal fiction manufactured for the benefit of press and amusement of fans.

Despite all the struggles, the album did, finally, come together, as a single LP with six tracks, each accompanied by a narrative text relating the details of the tale being told by the music. Listeners were encouraged to read along with the music, a similar concept to what Michael Nesmith had done in 1974 with his concept album, The Prison, which was also a selection of songs that were accompanied by a book, with each chapter being integrated with a corresponding song.

Musically, what was presented was the most technically complex the group had ever constructed, with mostly electronic sounds emulating the cold, harsh environment of the Arctic while often unintelligible voices brought the stories to life, sometimes incorporating corporate giggle parodies, like the Coke-a-Cola song, into the tribal chanting. Taken as a whole, listening to the album was an entirely immersive experience.

For the cover graphics, the group debuted their brand new costumes, featuring the members in tuxedos with giant eyeball heads peaked by jaunty top hats. The effectiveness of the image was so utterly iconic and instantly recognizable that, virtually overnight, if became the default image for the group, a representation that would remain indelibly etched in the public mind for the rest of the band's career. Though they would subsequently evolve a wide variety of costumes, with entirely distinctive themes, they'd never be able to shake the association with those outfits.

Eskimo was my gateway into the world of The Residents. I'd seen the Ralph Records ads in various music magazines for a few years, but it was the striking look of that album, along with the crystal clear focus of its concept, that drew me to them, and I soon backtracked through their early catalogue thereafter, and followed the group closely through the Mole Trilogy. In my mind, Eskimo is something of a high watermark for the group, though they hit many highs before and after its release. Still, it remains the most emblematic of their albums. It certainly helped establish them as the masters of weirdness, securing them a dedicated fan-base among the alternative music fans of the post-punk era. They've done many concept albums throughout their career, but Eskimo will always stand in my mind as the most succinctly perfect of them all.