The Residents – The Tunes Of Two Cities

Probably their best - and best sounding, at least this first vinyl edition.

Im new to The Residents and I don’t know which albums are considered real studio albums, is this one?

This is a nice sounding album and music is really special. Recording and presing are good too.

This recording sounds so good. Found a sealed copy of this recently complete with the Ralph Records 10th Anniversary sticker on the cover. Residents on vinyl sound excellent. The orchestration on this album is legit. The sax on the first track cuts just as hard as on the audiophile jazz releases I own. Quite possibly my favorite Residents album next to Mark of the Mole. It seems their albums were recorded and mastered really well because every original release I own from them has great fidelity, enhanced depth and clear, defined sound. The vinyl version of this record gives the music a little more breathing room than the CD and adds a nice analog warmth and a wide soundstage that really pulls you into these oddball electronic experiments. Other formats of this album don’t even come close to they way this sounds on vinyl. Residents on vinyl is the way to go.

'Tunes of Two Cities' continues the trilogy begun with 'Mark of the Mole', but in a much lighter atmosphere. It is less successful. We can feel that they are running out of steam and that there’s a drop in intensity. As if The Residents we’re trying to “muzakified” their bizarre universe. It’s not a bad album but it’s based on gimmicks that forecast their – simplified – creative process ahead. As the guitarist Snakefinger told me when I interviewed him in 1986, The Residents now had emulators and were no longer obliged to make so much effort to produce interesting sounds. From now on, this technological facility mark the work of The Residents and I’ve lost some of my interest in the band. It must be said that there was a lot going on on the music scene in the early 1980s and I had less time to devote to a band that required all the attention to be fully appreciated.

© Alain Cliche 2016

The last great Residents album (that I know of). This, Eskimo, Not Available (unextended), Fingerprince, Intermission, and the Satisfaction single... top shelf. Duck Stab, Commercial Album, Meet the Residents, Mark of the Mole, and Third Reich & Roll, almost top shelf. Can't stand any release I've heard since, but I've in no way heard them all. One of the most interesting bursts of dark hilarity, poking rock 'n' roll pomposity in the eye, to come out of the seventies and early eighties. Then...O' inevitable calamity, they took themselves seriously or something worse. Judging from the impression that one guy was singing all the songs afterwards, I suspect half or more of the heads under the skulls and eyeballs went off to skip rope after the Mole Show ambitions and were replaced with heads equally ambitious in the realm of what was left of eye-eyed Rockdom. They were still weird, but dull. Anyone know of any great Residents albums since Tunes of Two Cities? If so, please share... I'd love to hear it. Love the use of the E-Mu on this one. On first listen, back when it was new, I couldn't make out what the hell instruments were being played... things from another world. Love it.

One of my absolute favourites of the Residents. The pure essence of their genius. Great strange sounds and melodies, drama vs irony. Mostly instrumental, it's a wide spectrum from faked jazz to absurd march music, from ambient to tribal electronics. Sounds absolutely fresh in 2014.

This album (part two of The Mole Trilogy) was derived from a concept which grew out of the early Mark Of The Mole recording sessions and was then recorded concurrently with the latter half of that of the two conflicting races in the Mole Story, (Moles and Chubs), by offering six examples of each style. Happy Home is an excerpt from the end of Act II of Innisfree, a musical drama conceived by The Residents, which is yet to be completed. (or begun)
The Tunes Of Two Cities was the first album ever recorded to feature music produced on a Emulator (from E-mu Systems), a special type of keyboard instrument which digitally samples any sound for later modification and playback. The second was Peter Gabriel.