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1997: The Missing Year - The Original Disfigured Night Arrangement

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1997: The Missing Year - The Original Disfigured Night Arrangement is a download-only EP by The Residents, featuring demo material for their Disfigured Night live performance project, recorded in early 1997.

The EP was released on the Robot Selling Device in 2009, as part of the 1997: The Missing Year series of digital-only releases. More demos from this era were released on another instalment in the series, 1997: The Missing Year - Scattered Unfinished Music Sketches.

All three tracks were released on CD in 2016 as part of the Klanggalerie compilation album Disfigured Night.

History

The "Missing Year"

Typically, when The Residents enter a year, they already have their next major project in mind; and for 1997, that was their fourth CD-ROM, I Murdered Mommy. This project was cancelled by forces outside of The Residents' hands in January of that year, and so, The Residents spent the entirety of 1997 trying to figure out what to do next, whilst performing one off live shows to keep the cashflow coming.

The Original Disfigured Night Arrangement is an instrumental demo recorded by The Residents during this year to assist their live perfromances.

Release

The EP was released on the Robot Selling Device in 2009 as part of 1997: The Missing Year, a series of digital-only releases. The Residents included an album-length collection of demos on another installment,Scattered Unfinished Music Sketches.

All three tracks were released on CD in 2016 as part of the Klanggalerie compilation album Disfigured Night.

Reception

Contemporary

Reviewing the digital EP almost a year after its release,[1] freelance music reviewer Mark Prindle described The Original Disfigured Night Arrangement as "instrumental keyboard music" containing "some nice passages -- some melancholia... some oldtimey pop from the Gershwin school, a teacup of harmonious beautifulia -- but they inevitably give way to maddeningly abstract non-melody."[2]

Track listing

  1. Original Disfigured Night 1 (6:10)
  2. Original Disfigured Night 2 (4:36)
  3. Original Disfigured Night 3 (5:08)

Liner notes

Over the years, The Residents have been so prolific that it's easy to see that a year could have simply vanished and gone unnoticed. And one did - 1997, THE MISSING YEAR!

In the early to mid 90s, The Residents were quite active in the creation of CD-ROMs, releasing Freak Show, The Gingerbread Man, and Bad Day on the Midway from 1992-95. With another CD-ROM, I Murdered Mommy, scheduled for 1996, the group expected to continue working in that direction for some time, but the CD-ROM market unexpectedly dried up and support for the project disappeared, leaving Mommy as yet another unfinished, semi-mythical masterpiece. So much time was devoted to writing and designing the CD-ROM that, other than some soundtrack music for the game and a short side project, Pollex Christi, no music was recorded in 1996.

Having lost so much time on a dead concept, 1997 finally arrived, but the new year was not so happy. For the first time in decades, The Residents had absolutely nothing in the works. No CD-ROM, no album, no plans. 1997 was born dead. And truthfully, the year never got much better, but the group did begin moving in some interesting new directions. Creatively, The Residents saw Pollex Christi as a successful experiment, consequently they decided to follow it up with another highly experimental, classically styled piece. Moving quickly, in the spring of 1997, the group began work on a new 15 min work, Disfigured Night, and soon roughed out a MIDI arrangement.

Release history

Year Label Format Region Notes
2009 RSD MP3 USA
2016 Klanggalerie CD Austria As part of the compilation album, Disfigured Night.

Buy Or Die!

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 - The Original Disfigured Night Arrangement EP", Mark's Record Reviews, March 13th 2010
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