The Residents - Shadowland [MVD Audio/ Ralph Records/ Cryptic Corp - 2015]Shadowland is the third in the recent series of live release from this infamous & highly distinctive US collective. Like the other releases in this series Shadowland comes in the form of a CD, and takes in one of the performance from the bands 40th anniversary tour that took place through-out 2013 & 2014. The live set on this disc comes from May the 10th 2014, when the three piece played Le Lieu Unique in Nantes France. The CD offers up seventeen tracks from through-out the bands career, and like the other volumes in this series the band give each of the tracks often quite radical reworking's, compared to the original album versions. For this set the focus seems to be more guitar & vocal based, with the electronic & sample instrumentation elements rather lacking. Each of the tracks here is certainly creative & rewarding re-takes of classic tracks, but for me I found sometimes the sound pallet felt a little limited compared with say the set they played on Marching To The See one of the early albums in this series. So all in all this is another worthy addition to the Randy, Bob & Chuck/ 40th anniversary tour series, with each of the seventeen track offering up different takes on Rez classic’s, I just wished the sound pallet could have just been a little more wide/varied. Roger Batty
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