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‘23rd Century Giants,’ the incredible true story of Renaldo & The Loaf!


 
Since much of Renaldo & The Loaf’s work experiments with time, it makes a funny kind of sense that, on 2017’s Gurdy Hurding, the duo picked up right about where they left off with 1987’s The Elbow Is Taboo. Perhaps, like all the tapes they’ve run backwards over the years, their music really does borrow from the future. In the early days especially, they liked to play songs unsinging themselves, the sound of speech sucking itself back up through the lungs to its point of origin in the brain. And wouldn’t it be wonderful, inhaling song and speech out of the environment into your nervous system?

You would be unlikely to mistake Renaldo & The Loaf’s music for someone else’s. The sound, an emergent property of Renaldo Malpractice and Ted the Loaf’s decades-long musical friendship, is entirely homemade, but ingeniously fitted together and sturdily constructed—each song a miniature feat of engineering, built to last. “Primitive modernism,” Ralph Records called it in 1981, announcing the release of Songs for Swinging Larvae.

So while the timbres and harmonies can be bracingly unfamiliar, Renaldo & The Loaf’s songs teem with earworms, and probably brain- and spineworms, too. In fact, let me take this opportunity to recommend that the songs themselves be classified and studied as new zoological discoveries. (These days, when I listen to Klanggalerie‘s pristine and greatly enlarged editions of the Renaldo & The Loaf catalog, I often picture the menagerie of intergalactic pilgrims in Clark Ashton Smith’s “The City of the Singing Flame.”)

Alex Wroten’s excellent new documentary 23rd Century Giants, out March 8 on Blu-ray and streaming platforms, tells how two teenage Tyrannosaurus Rex fans from Portsmouth became the weirdest band on Ralph. Along with Renaldo Malpractice and Ted the Loaf themselves, the documentary collects testimony from the Cryptic Corporation’s Homer Flynn, Jay Clem, and the late Hardy Fox; the visionary director behind Renaldo & The Loaf’s Songs for Swinging Larvae video, Graeme Whifler; veterans of the Ralph and T.E.C. Tones labels, and patient recipients of my adolescent correspondence, Tom Timony and Sheenah Spece; album illustrators Poxodd and Steven Cerio; and DEVO archivist Michael Pilmer, among others.

Some highlights follow from my recent conversation with director Alex Wroten and the two learned rotcods.


Renaldo & The Loaf, 1982 (courtesy of Well Dang! Productions)

Under the Lights

 
Is this the first time the two of you have been in front of the camera very much, Brian and David? The “Backwards Film Study” that’s in there seems to come from the early Eighties—

Brian Poole (Renaldo Malpractice): Oh, you’ve seen that, have you? [Laughs]

Well, I’ve just seen the little bit that’s in the documentary. I’m looking forward to seeing the full thing on the Blu-ray.

David Janssen (Ted the Loaf): That’s it. It’s only very short, that’s all there is.

Brian: Basically, yeah. Three minutes, that’s it!

David: And no, we’re not really used to being in front of the camera much. There’s that three-minute thing; there’s, I suppose, the filming we did for the “A Convivial Ode” video…

Brian: And that’s it, really, isn’t it?

David: I mean, unintentionally, the stuff that was filmed live. I mean, that was just, someone happened to film it, so we weren’t really conscious of being in front of a camera.

This is the Vienna show you’re talking about?

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I suppose Alex’s documentary is kind of the longest we’ve ever been under the lights of movie cameras.

Brian: Yeah, that’s right. But of course, we didn’t have to do makeup or anything like that, or costumes. [Laughs]

Alex Wroten (director, 23rd Century Giants): Well, not totally true, ‘cause there’s the part where you’re wearing the glasses [designed by Poxodd], so you did a little costumes.

David: And the masks.

Brian: In answer to your question, no. We’re really not used to being the center of attention, if you like. There have been stills done. Up in the Eighties and that, we did sort of go into a studio and have some photos done of us, but apart from that, no. In fact, the material that Alex asked for—I mean, obviously, as the documentary was coming to fruition and that, he wanted to say “What visual material do you have?” And it was a very, very useful thing looking through the archive, which, fortunately, I’ve got it here, our stuff, because I haven’t moved house, and it’s just here. So I was able to find quite a lot of stuff, but, you know, there’s some creative stuff that Alex had to do in the film to illustrate certain things, let’s say.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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02.11.2022
09:06 am
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New ‘visual history’ book celebrates 50 years of the Residents! Sneak peek and exclusive premiere!


‘A Sight for Sore Eyes, Vol. 1’
 
For about 50 years now, the Residents have operated in secret, hiding their identities behind masks and costumes. But now you can see the members of the band full nude!

Yes, the Residents are the subject of a handsome new coffee-table book from Melodic Virtue, the publisher of like retrospectives about the Butthole Surfers, Pixies, and Ministry. The Residents: A Sight for Sore Eyes, Vol. 1 collects beautifully printed reproductions of art, photos, correspondence, press clippings and ephemera from the first 13 years of the Eye Guys’ career, opening in their humble San Mateo dwelling in 1970 and concluding on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before the triumphant 1983 Uncle Sam Mole Show
 

‘Not Available’
 
While their faces remain mostly obscured in these pages, the Residents’ bare genitals are reproduced in black and white in more than one spread, so if you ever run into a pants-less member of the group, you’ll have no trouble recognizing him! That alone is worth the price of this volume. 

But let’s suppose you’re jaded about seeing the Residents’ junk; say you’ve already got enlargements of the Delta Nudes CD cover tacked up all over your walls, and Kinko’s quality is good enough for you. Well, how about a sharp full-color photo of the Mysterious N. Senada’s saxophone and another of its case, bearing the word “COMMERCIAL” in giant red capital letters? Do you have that, Mr. Great Big Residents Fan? How about shots from inside Poor Know Graphics’ design studio circa 1972, hmm? You got pictures of Snakefinger’s wedding? I’m so sure. What about the fucking floor plans for the Residents’ old Sycamore Street headquarters in San Francisco?
 

‘Eloise’ from ‘Vileness Fats’
 
Many of the book’s contents are things I’d hoped to find inside—shots from the set of Vileness Fats, beautiful stills from Graeme Whifler’s “Hello Skinny” film, W.E.I.R.D. fan club papers—but nearly as many are treasures I didn’t know I’d been missing, such as images from a proposal for an Eskimo opera, or screenshots from a prototype Mark of the Mole video game for the Atari 2600, or a snap of a promotional packet of Residents brand Tunes of Two Cities aspirin (to treat “the newest headache” from the band). Old favorites like the black-and-white promo photo of the band shopping for groceries are accompanied by contact sheets and other prints from the shoot. Turn the page, and it’s like The Wizard of Oz: the Residents are standing in the checkout line in Technicolor.
 

‘The Act of Being Polite’
 
Peppered throughout are testimonials from the group’s many-generational cohort of colleagues and fans. Collaborators and Ralph Records alumni like Mole Show emcee Penn Jillette, members of Tuxedomoon and Yello, and all of Renaldo & The Loaf get in reminiscences. Don Preston of the Mothers of Invention tells how he came to play his Moog parts on Eskimo; Patrick Gleeson conveys his delight at the Residents’ “fuck-you-ness”; Andy Partridge of XTC (a/k/a Commercial Album guest Sandy Sandwich) apostrophizes the Eyeballs in verse.

Then there’s Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten remembering the Berlin record store that turned him on to The Third Reich ‘n Roll in the Seventies, and Les Claypool takes us to the living room in El Sobrante, California where his teenage girlfriend first played him Duck Stab on her Marantz. Danny Elfman hears a different path his own life might have taken when he listens back. And bringing down the mean age of this all-star gang are some of the Residents’ “children”: Eric André, members of Steel Pole Bath Tub, Death Grips, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum…
 

Handwritten ‘Lizard Lady’ lyrics from the ‘Duck Stab/Buster & Glen Notebook’
 
The book includes a seven-inch of “Nobody’s Nos,” an unreleased song composed for the early masterpiece Not Available. There’s also a signed deluxe edition that comes with a picture disc of “Nobody’s Nos” and a supplementary 24-page book of notes and handwritten lyrics from the making of Duck Stab/Buster & Glen. Mercy.

Below, the band Star Stunted (Sam Coomes, Rob Crow, Zach Hill, Mike Morasky, and Ego Plum, all of whom contributed to the book, along with its author, Aaron Tanner) performs the Residents’ 1972 holiday heartwarmer (heartwormer?) “Santa Dog” in an exclusive Dangerous Minds premiere.

It’s a Christmas miracle!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Residential: Homer Flynn on the Residents’ ambitious ‘God in Three Persons’ show at MoMA
The Residents’ press conference at the Lincoln Memorial, 1983
The Residents demolish ‘We Are the World’
Take a walk around a masterpiece with the Residents’ ‘Eskimo Deconstructed’
‘Oh Mummy! Oh Daddy!’ The Residents’ first show as The Residents, 1976

Posted by Oliver Hall
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12.15.2021
05:18 am
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The thrilling conclusion of Andrew Liles’ 42-hour musical work, ‘Colossus’


Andrew Liles by Davide Pepe

Hic Rhodus, hic saltus!

                                    —Aesop (via Erasmus)

Andrei Tarkovsky called his art “sculpting in time,” but Stalker has the brisk pace of a Tom and Jerry cartoon compared to Andrew Liles’ new mega-album Colossus, a 50 LP box set released in digital form. Liles specializes in improving things, and Colossus is bigger and better music. Not only is it superior to other new records, it is superior to the 50 years of pop history it digests. 

Last March, we premiered the first half of Liles’ audio monument to his half-century between heaven and earth: 50 tracks, 50 minutes each, one for every year since 1969. With the arrival of Part Two this month, the 42-hour opus is complete. It’s about three times the length of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, 25 times as long as The Concert for Bangladesh, or 360 times the album version of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (irrefragably scrambled in Part One).

The tracks, named after the songs that topped the chart on each of Liles’ birthdays, are original compositions distantly related to the number ones that inspired them—per Liles:

The music is either in the same key or with the same notes played but in a different order, backwards or inverted. Further music and notation has been added by myself. They are absolutely nothing like the originals.

Additionally, the words to the songs are formed from the lyrics to every Number One hit from the last 50 years. But with a twist.

I have adapted the lyrics by using the William Burroughs cut up method and further changed them to make some kind of structure, but they remain predominantly abstract and nonsensical.

Part Two brings us from 1994, represented by Mariah Carey’s “Without You,” to the present, and it is here that Liles really shines, because the hits are so much worse. If you listen to the originals, Celine Dion’s abominable “My Heart Will Go On”—bad enough in 1997-‘98—sounds like a Bach concerto next to what came after: Madonna’s “American Pie,” Westlife’s “Uptown Girl,” Chico’s “It’s Chico Time.” But when pop goes low, Liles goes high. Colossus draws strength from the passage of time that saps and enfeebles the top ten, right through the irresistible one-two combination that closes the album. By the time Edward Ka-Spel of the Legendary Pink Dots performs “Shape of You,” named after Ed Sheeran’s 2017 hit, and David Tibet narrates “God’s Plan,” after Drake’s supermarket sweep of last year, you may imagine that pop music is Tom Skerritt’s character in Alien, cocooned and begging for death, and Colossus is the muscular, merciful Sigourney Weaver who sets him on fire.

There is a lesson here for despairing pop fans: dross can be transformed into solid gold! All you have to do to make an Ed Sheeran song listenable is remove all of Ed Sheeran’s contributions to it, find a better Edward to sing it, and radically rewrite the music and lyrics. Then set it on fire. You can keep the original title, no problem.

Andrew Liles also recently released The Geometry of Social Deprivation, based on 23 shellac records from the twenties. The first album by Nodding God, Liles’ new group with David Tibet, comes out in May.

Stream Part Two of Colossus below and then buy it from Bandcamp.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Colossus’: Andrew Liles’ 42-hour opus reimagines 50 years of pop, a DM premiere
A half-hour version of Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’ celebrates 30 years of ‘Reign in Blood’
Current 93’s David Tibet and Killing Joke’s Youth discuss their first album as Hypnopazūzu

Posted by Oliver Hall
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03.29.2019
11:19 am
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‘Colossus’: Andrew Liles’ 42-hour opus reimagines 50 years of pop, a DM premiere


Andrew Liles on the cover of his ‘Diario de un Monstruo’ LP, 2017

Sometimes it was a man that sang and sometimes it was a woman, and sometimes the one who sang it did it so well that two or three of the people who were there fell to the ground shrieking and tearing with their hands.
                                        —Arthur Machen, “The White People”

Andrew Liles—collaborator of Nurse With Wound and Current 93, remixer of the Groundhogs, producer, prolific recording artist, “regarded by some to be the funniest man” (Tony (T.S.) McPhee)—turned 49 yesterday, March 11. He marked the beginning of his 50th year by releasing 20 hours and 50 minutes of music: the first half of his new work Colossus, which will eventually comprise 50 tracks of 50 minutes each, one for every year of his life to date.

Each track is named after a song that was number one in the UK chart on Liles’ birthday, and all feature a guest narrator; on Colossus Part One (1969-1993), Liles is joined by members of Faust (Jean-Hervé Péron), the Legendary Pink Dots (Edward Ka-Spel), Renaldo & the Loaf (Brian Poole), Comus (Bobbie Watson, Jon Seagroatt), and Mayhem (Maniac), along with Benjamin Louche, James Worse, Karen Pittis and Steve Pittis. It’s a completely insane vision of 25 years of life and 25 years of pop music, and I loved every single minute.

Colossus is conceptually related to Liles’ “extensions” of classic songs, such as his 50-minute elaboration of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows,” his 30-minute edit of Slayer’s “Angel of Death,” and, most recently, his 47-minute mix of “When the Levee Breaks.” But, crucially, all the music on Colossus is original work. Liles’ method:

The music is either in the same key or with the same notes played but in a different order, backwards or inverted. Further music and notation has been added by myself. They are absolutely nothing like the originals.

Additionally, the words to the songs are formed from the lyrics to every Number One hit from the last 50 years. But with a twist.

I have adapted the lyrics by using the William Burroughs cut up method and further changed them to make some kind of structure, but they remain predominantly abstract and nonsensical.

 

via Andrew Liles
 
Head above the heavens, feet below the hells, Colossus spans the sublime and the abject. There are passages of exquisite beauty, and there are parts that make your bowels cramp and your teeth hurt. You really have to put in 20+ hours to appreciate its range. On the one hand, it’s hard to imagine anyone’s parole officer, spiritual advisor or grandma objecting to the boys’ choir on “If,” or the tinkling music-box arpeggios that make up the gentler parts of “Chain Reaction.” On the other, the martial pomp and mortal terror of “Wuthering Heights,” the total nightmare James Worse makes of “Chanson D’Amour,” and Brian Poole’s reading of Bread’s “Everything I Own” (number one for Boy George in ‘87) in an industrial setting all demand courage (and probably headphones) on the part of the listener.

There is no useful way to categorize this monstrous, perverse work, which, Godzilla-like, lays waste to all genres, supremely indifferent to their partisans’ cries. For instance: passages in “Billy Don’t Be A Hero” suggest stately art music, the Residents, Goblin, Wendy Carlos, Krautrock, circus organ, David Lynch soundtracks, and power electronics; and yet, somehow, it’s still “Billy Don’t Be A Hero.” The feeling emerges that you’re not listening to the song so much as visiting the mental space from which it originated, skrying the Paper Lace’s stage outfits on the Tree of Life.

Or maybe you’re confronting the shambling, undead specter of the song, as is the case with “Jealous Guy.” Musically, Liles’ composition is more Bernard Herrmann than John Lennon, and the scrambled lyrics, read by Maniac, become like a soliloquy Frankenstein is delivering while he pursues you into the bathroom, arms outstretched:

I mean to hurt you
I made you past control
Beating hurt
I’m mean

I don’t know how to summarize these 21 hours of music except to say that the feeling of being haunted came up repeatedly. On “Wand’rin’ Star” (another Maniac vocal), it’s as if Lee Marvin’s shade is trying to communicate by Ouija board, and he can only use words from his Paint Your Wagon hit, and he does not bring good news.

You should let Colossus transform your life. Let its ominous chords suffuse your changeless routine with dread; let its heroic themes exalt your soul. And be grateful that, at last, there is a version of “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” Dangerous Minds readers can be proud to sing at karaoke.

Below is “99 Red Balloons,” Liles’ selection for Dangerous Minds, narrated by James Worse. Get Colossus Part One (1969-1993) on Bandcamp.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
There’s a 50-minute version of the Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ for the song’s 50th anniversary
A half-hour version of Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’ celebrates 30 years of ‘Reign in Blood’

Posted by Oliver Hall
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03.12.2018
10:13 am
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Want to see something REALLY WEIRD? Here’s Renaldo & the Loaf’s ‘Songs for Swinging Larvae’
12.01.2015
11:05 am
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Renaldo and the Loaf are an extremely obscure English musical duo comprised of a pathologist (David Janssen or “Ted the Loaf”) and an architect (Brian Poole or “Renaldo Malpractice”). They met in school and made experimental music starting in the late 1970s that defied description.

On holiday in San Francisco, one of them gave a tape to one of The Residents, who were suitably impressed. They soon made an album for Ralph Records called Songs for Swinging Larvae, which is known as one of the strangest records of all time— (if it is known at all) —and sells for exorbitant prices (when it can be found). The pair fell out of touch in the 90s but have made music together again in recent years. They even have an official website.
 
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Although there is no way this would ever happen again today, believe it or not, this video has actually aired on American television many, many times during the early 1980s on the eclectic “underground” Night Flight programming block on the USA Network. This video, the Residents’ “One Minute Movies” and a couple of other videos (“Big Electric Cat” by Adrian Belew also comes to mind) that I saw on Night Flight warped me badly enough that at the age of 16 I decided I was going to move to New York and “become an underground filmmaker”! (*Ahem*). Directed by Graeme Whifler who made many wonderful videos for The Residents, Tuxedomoon and The Red Hot Chili Peppers in the early 1980s.
 
If you like things like Captain Beefheart, The Residents or Wonder Showzen, you should give this quirky, almost kinda scary, vintage video oddity a look.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.01.2015
11:05 am
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