CHUCK'S GHOST MUSIC

If you love odd, original and quirky music and you haven't heard The Residents yet, then you are definitely missing the boat and you have a LOT of catching up to do. Their discography and output is infinite.

This particular offering from these oddball eyeballs is mostly instrumental. It is actually a soundtrack. It is comprised of music used as background for one of their character's ghost stories. If I understand it correctly, The Residents called one of their tours "Talking Light" and in the tour, a character named Randy Rose tells some very strange ghost stories and this is the background music they use. Now, in this album, we only get the music, electronic music and sounds, without any narration. So we have to listen to this album to critique the music only.

So, how does this music fare on it's own? I have to say that when I listen to this, I actually enjoy it in a strange kind of way. It is spooky and atmospheric. I can't call it ambient, though their are ambient passages, because there are several loud passages also. Throughout a few of the tracks, you hear subdued pieces of advertisements that sound spooky in and of themselves which must have something to do with the show that goes with this music. In the track titled "Perchance to Dream" you hear parts of the song "(All I Have To Do is) Dream" with the original vocals and with scary synth fading in and out throughout the track. I have to say that for some people, this might be hard to sit through. But I found it quite intriguing and worthy of more listens. There is enough here in the songs that keep them moving forward and you are always wondering what is lurking around the next corner.

I think the people that might find this appealing would be those who love some of the more avant garde electronic music by Art Zoyd, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream or Univers Zero. There is definitely enough substance to this music to rank this album up there with the inaccessible music of those bands. If you like that kind of music, then you should give this a listen. I think this music would fit right in to the music collection of this kind of genre fan. I'm going to call it an excellent addition to a collection of that genre. 4 stars.