''Eskimo'' is an album by American

art rock Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that generally reflects a challenging or avant-garde approach to rock, or which makes use of modernist, experimental, or unconventional elements. Art rock aspires to elevate rock from entertainment to an art ...

group

the Residents The Residents are an American art collective and art rock band best known for their avant-garde music and multimedia works. Since their first official release, ''Meet the Residents'' (1974), they have released over 60 albums, numerous music vi ...

. The album was originally supposed to follow 1977's ''

Fingerprince ''Fingerprince'' is the third studio album by American art rock group the Residents, released in 1977. It was allegedly intended to be a three-sided record titled ''Tourniquet of Roses,'' but due to financial difficulties in fulfilling such a proje ...

''; however, due to many delays and arguments with management, it was not released until 1979. Upon release it was hailed as the group's best record to date. The pieces on ''Eskimo'' feature home-made instruments and chanting against backdrops of wind-like

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

noise and miscellaneous sound effects. The work is programmatic, each piece pairing music with text detailing a corresponding pseudo-

ethnographic Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

narrative. While ''Eskimo'' is officially maintained to be a true historical document of life in the Arctic, the stories are deliberately absurd fictions only loosely based in actual

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

culture, and the chanting is a combination of gibberish and commercial slogans. The album satirizes ignorance toward and mistreatment of the

indigenous peoples of the Americas The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the A ...

Diskomo

A companion piece, ''Diskomo'', was released in 1980 as a 12-inch single, featuring a remix of the songs backed by a disco beat. In 1988, ''Diskomo'' was covered by Belgian

new beat New beat is a Belgian electronic dance music genre that fuses elements of new wave, hi-NRG,Simon Reynolds: ''Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture.'' Routledge 1999, , p. 124. EBM and hip hop (e.g. scratching).Ti ...

group L&O, and retitled "Even Now". ''Diskomo 2000'', a follow-up EP featuring the original remix, its

B-side The A-side and B-side are the two sides of phonograph records and cassettes; these terms have often been printed on the labels of two-sided music recordings. The A-side usually features a recording that its artist, producer, or record compan ...

(''Goosebump'', a collection of children's songs played on toy musical instruments), and several other versions, was released in 2000. The EP's title track, "Diskomo 2000" redoes ''Diskomo'' in the style of "Even Now".

Track listing

1987 CD bonus tracks

Tracks 7-10 taken from the 1979 album ''Subterranean Modern''. The album also featured the music of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

bands Chrome, MX-80 Sound and

Tuxedomoon Tuxedomoon is an experimental music, experimental, post-punk, New wave music, new wave band from San Francisco, California, United States. The band formed in the late 1970s at the beginning of the punk rock movement. Pulling influence from punk an ...

2019 pREServed edition bonus tracks

Personnel

The Residents The Residents are an American art collective and art rock band best known for their avant-garde music and multimedia works. Since their first official release, ''Meet the Residents'' (1974), they have released over 60 albums, numerous music vi ...

– vocals, instruments, effects *

Snakefinger Philip Charles Lithman (17 June 1949 – 1 July 1987), who performed under the stage name Snakefinger, was an English musician, singer and songwriter. A multi-instrumentalist, he was best known for his guitar and violin work and his collab ...

–

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

Chris Cutler Chris Cutler (born 4 January 1947) is an English percussionist, composer, lyricist and music theorist. Best known for his work with English avant-rock group Henry Cow, Cutler was also a member and drummer of other bands, including Art Bears, Ne ...

–

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

Don Preston Donald Ward Preston (born September 21, 1932) is an American jazz and rock keyboardist. He is known for working with Frank Zappa from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s. Biography Preston was born into a family of musicians in Detroit and began st ...

–

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eskimo (Album) The Residents albums 1979 albums Ralph Records albums