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1997: The Missing Year - Scattered Unfinished Music Sketches

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1997: The Missing Year - Scattered Unfinished Music Sketches is an unfinished demo album by The Residents, released on the Robot Selling Device in 2009.

The album is an entry in the group's series of digital releases 1997: The Missing Year, and collects music sketches originating from the March-April 1997 demo recordings for their live performance project Disfigured Night.

History

Scattered Unfinished Music Sketches is an album-length instrumental demo recording by The Residents, dated April 1997.

Work on the album likely started in 1995 after completing their 22nd studio album, Have A Bad Day, and slowly worked on throughout 1996. The group focused almost entirely on the I Murdered Mommy CD-ROM, which was cancelled in early 97.

Two vocal pieces from this period exist, but without studio recordings; the first is Harold, a spoken word piece about a widow who dreams of her husband's ghost, and the other 'The Oujia Board', is about a man who communicates with his deceased mother through an Oujia board.

Also written around this time is the 15 minute long Disfigured Night suite, of which the instrumental demo was released separately from the rest of this material.

Both songs are about reincarnation, hinting at the album's original concept. Also created for the album was a cover of We Are The World.

In the Spring of 1996, The Residents were invited to perform at the Adobe World Center. It was short notice for a concert, but The Residents decided to take the music from this instrumental album and adapted it into a greatest hits style show, ready for performance in May 1997. Afterwards, The Residents began to focus on a newly recorded demo track titled Disfigured Transfigured Night, which itself was adapted into the live show Disfigured Night.

The album was released on June 23rd, 2009, through The Residents' web-store RSD, alongside other related unreleased material as part of the 1997: The Missing Year series.

Reception

Contemporary

Reviewing Scattered Unfinished Music Sketches almost a year after its release,[1] freelance music reviewer Mark Prindle found it "strange... that The Residents never released these tracks, considering how much more melodic, bizarre and inspired they are than most of the band's CD-ROM work of the period", noting "97", "97-3", "97-7" and "97-8" as stand-outs.[2]

Track listing

  1. 97 (2:00)
  2. 97-2 (5:54)
  3. 97-3 (3:21)
  4. 97-4 (1:08)
  5. 97-5 (4:15)
  6. 97-6 (2:36)
  7. 97-7 (3:44)
  8. 97-8 (6:37)
  9. 97-9 (1:33)
  10. 97-10 (3:12)
  11. We Are The World (6:55)

See also

  1. ↑ Mark Prindle, "The 'What's New? Page", Mark's Record Reviews, March 13th 2010 (archived via archive.org)
  2. ↑ Mark Prindle, "1997: The Missing Year - Scattered Unfinished Music Sketches", Mark's Record Reviews, March 13th 2010
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