Charles Bobuck — The Residents Presents: Codgers On The Moon

Codgers On The Moon is a collection of mainly up-beat, moody, and ethnic tinged electro instrumental pieces from one of the main minds behind The Residents. I guess if you were to compare this to anything in the Residents forty year catalogue, it would be their soundtrack or PC game soundtrack  work,  which they’ve released on & off over the last twenty or so years….so really this is not a new/ full Residents albums, but more of a sonic side thought.

The predominant element through-out all of these eleven tracks is gamelan like percussion & sound, really every one of the tracks has these elements at it’s centre with some subtle  stabbing synth banks, synthesized  instrumental elements, & electro textures ebbed around the sides of the tracks.  I think all of the gamelan elements here are created with-in a electronic setting, through there may-be some actually live playing going on here too.  Each track is fairly melodic & dense in it’s attack, and fitting the gamelan focuses there’s often a oriental feel to the melody lines, though also you get hints of melody lines from through-out the bands career.

On the whole this is a rewarding enough collection of instrumental tracks that run through with both ethnic/ oriental melodies, and subtle Resident based medloies. For the most part the tracks stay fairly up-beat, but there’s enough variation here to make it appealing through-out.  Though that said I can only really see this appealing to long term Resident fans, who particularly enjoy the more soundtrack &  gamelan focused side of their sound.