The Residents — Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?/The Census Tak
The release takes in twenty five tracks in all- ten from Whatever Happened To Vileness Fats?, and fifteen from The Census Taker. Sound wise all the tracks here are classic 1980’s Residents fare- mixing together buoyant, yet creepy & wonky layers of synth textures, off-kilter instrumental detail, & quirky electronic percussion. And genre wise we are in a most distinctive & bizarre place that brings together elements of: off-kilter easy listening, wonky electro jazz, nursery rhyme like melodies, odd world music elements, and sinister synth craft. As you’d expect with a soundtrack most of the tracks here are purely instrumental- but a few of the tracks do feature the wavering, strange & bizarre vocals of The Residents.
Whatever Happened To Vileness Fats? was a movie project that the band stared in 1972, and apparently consists of 14 hours of footage- though it was never fully complete, and to date only 32 minutes of footage has been released from the film. It focused in on suitable odd plot which told of a weird village that was under siege by bandits who were stealing the villages meat supply, forcing them to exist on vegetables alone. To take care of things, the village hire Siamese twin tag-team wrestlers to be their saviours. Unfortunately these twins also have their own problems, including an Indian princess whose lovers always die. All of the tracks on this part of the release are all original compositions, and really if you are a fan of The Residents around this period you must have this!.
The Census Taker was directed by Bruce R. Cook(who seeming only ever directed one other movie a 1989 horror entitled Nightwish). The film told of couple George (Greg Mullavey) and Martha (Meredith MacRae) who let Harvey (Garrett Morris), an annoying census taker, into their home, they find themselves under a barrage of increasingly abusive questions. Furious at his intrusiveness, and at their wit's end, they kill the census taker, but must hide the body from a determined investigator. Again a rather odd plot, and the soundtrack it’s self is a mix of new musical cues written for the film, along with instrumental/ different versions of tracks they had already reordered. This is soundtrack again is most rewarding- yes you get pervious released tracks, but there are only a few of these (taken from 1980’s The Commercial Album & 1982’s The Tunes Of Two Cities), and these are fairly different versions of said tracks too.
The last time this album got an official release was way back in 1991- when it appeared on CD for the first time, so this reissue is long, long over due. I don’t think this new version has been remastered in anyway, and you don’t get any extras( apart from a short write-up). But really as this has been Out-Of-Print for so long it’s great to get it in any form. Of course this is a must have for fans of The Residents, but I can also see this appealing to those who enjoy odd & off-kilter soundtrack fare from the 1980’s.