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I've mentioned before that I think the first eight studio albums of THE RESIDENTS are their classic period. I understand that many fans of the band have favourites outside of this 1974 to 1981 time frame. On RYM with thousands of ratings for all but "Mark Of The Mole" at under 1,400. They have "Not Available", "Duck Stab/ Buster Glen", "Meet The Residents" and "Eskimo" as the top four of those eight, and "Fingerprince", "Mark Of The Mole", "Commercial Album" and "The Third Reich 'N Roll" as the bottom four. I'm pretty good with that but I'd put "Fingerprince" in the top four and "Eskimo" down.

I have the MVD Audio issue from 2015 and there's no liner notes, but a very cool black and white picture of three of the eye balls and a skeleton following. Haunting is the word and I really like it. At least on the back cover they tell me that there are special appearances by Chris Cutler, Sandy Sandwich(Sandy Partridge XTC), Mud's sis(Helen, e-wife of Hardy), Snakefinger and Don Jackovich. And Fred Frith is given the honour of being called the "Extra hard working musician". There's also the "Special secret appearances: ?" who turns out to be female singer Lene Lovich.

While the previous album "Eskimo" might be the band at their most proggiest, here we get 40 one minute tracks which is so commercial right? I don't have the liner notes like others where we are told to listen to each track three times in a row. And I get it, familiarity is part of growing to like music, and with 40 tracks that will take a ton of listens to actually know these songs even though they are only a minute long. I found myself constantly looking at how much time was left with each track, instead of focussing on the music. This is like the anti-prog album. And that album cover looks better upside down, just sayin'.

This was a tough one for me. I love that this band tried some things over their careers. You know the moles, or the eskimos, sound collages, deconstructed pop tunes, holding the release of an album back until they forgot about it, and on and on. What a band!