If the 70s had been the decade of great themed works for the Residents, in retrospect the 80s were above all the years of the Mole Trilogy, the long saga that kept them busy from 1981 to 1985.
The most ambitious work of their career is the "spectacle of the mole," an off-off pantomime based on the story told on three concept albums ( Mark Of The Mole , Tune Of The Two Cities , Big Bubble , with the interludes collected in Intermission); a sort of animal allegory on alienation in modern society, imbued with Orwell ("Animal Farm") and Chaplin ("Modern Times"). The two people that confront each other speak two different "musical" languages: one an abrasive and industrial rock like Pere Ubu, the other a relaxed jazz cocktail.
The spirit is that of a Disneyland grandeur. On the usual soundtrack made up by polyrhythmic melodies, totally distorted by filters and noises, the Residents put together a rather unintelligible performance, with a lot of German expressionism and some futurist interludes. Perfect soundtrack for an early Soviet futurist film, all set on the corality of the masses and on the sound "attractions", the work takes place in a dark and dramatic atmosphere, oppressed by mechanical rhythms, martial trenodies and a desolating sense of impending doom. The music makes extensive use of distorted sound bands like Stockhausen, continuum like Ligeti, piano clusters, radio disturbances, electronic bubbles like Subotnick.
These shows, for better or for worse, are the most radical experiences of rock theater.
If the beginning, Mark of The Mole (Ralph, 1981), suffocated in the attempt to visually paint the scenes of the story, as a result appearing unresolved and pretentious, and demonstrating how the Residents' rock was fundamentally "light", therefore unsuitable for climactic “wagnerian" robotic songs like The New Machine , the second part, The Tunes of Two Cities (January 1982 - Ralph, 1982), under the pretext of documenting the musical customs of the "two cities", or alternating combined with "industrial" music, it confirmed so much the talent in packaging gags of the first part (Serenade For Missy , Smack Your Lips) as well as the weakness mentioned above in the tragic-futurist register of the second.
Source: https://www.scaruffi.com/vol4/resident.html
Tracklist:
Side One: Hole-Workers At The Mercies Of Nature [00:00]
• VOICES OF THE AIR
• THE ULTIMATE DISASTER
◦ Won't You Keep Us Working?
◦ First Warning
◦ Back to Normality?
◦ The Sky Falls!
◦ Why Are We Crying?
◦ The Tunnels are Filling
◦ It Never Stops
• MIGRATION
◦ March to the Sea
◦ The Observer
◦ Hole-Worker's New Hymn
Side 2: Hole-Workers Vs Man And Machine [19:11]
• ANOTHER LAND
◦ Rumors
◦ Arrival
◦ Deployment
◦ Saturation
• THE NEW MACHINE
◦ Idea
◦ Construction
◦ Failure/Reconstruction
◦ Success
• FINAL CONFRONTATION
◦ Driving the Moles Away
◦ Don't Tread on Me
◦ The Short War
◦ Resolution?
Genre: Electronic, Experimental, Industrial
Year of release: 1981
Label: Ralph Records,
