When The Residents begin work on their 2007 opus to insanity, The Voice of Midnight, the group felt the need to shake things up. Internal forces were pulling them in different directions, with some feeling compelled to follow the purity of an intellectual approach, while others favored the immediacy and rawness of their emotions. Unable to reconcile these different needs within their traditional structure, the group came up with a novel solution, creating an alter ego through which they could act out new roles, consequently freeing themselves from previous perspectives.

The Residents then promptly christened this conceptual alter ego as THE UGHS!

Realizing that their new direction was not unlike the methodology of psychodrama, they immediately saw THE UGHS as the perfect vehicle for exploring the conflicted emotions of Nate, the Voice of MIdnight's tormented protagonist, and threw themselves into a feverish schedule, recording loose and spontaneous music night and day. Working backwards from this improvised beginning, The Residents then fashioned "written music" from the raw, impulsive ideas they had created. The entire musical structure of The Voice of Midnight was built on these pieces.

For the next two years these original Ughs recordings languished in a box containing various demos, rough ideas and backup files, until someone, in a moment of idle curiosity, put one in a CD player. One-by-one, everyone in the room began to listen. Hearing it with fresh ears, the music of THE UGHS, freed from its previous role supporting The Voice of Midnight's narrative, sounded as fresh and dynamic as it did when it was first recorded. The time had come to resurrect THE UGHS.

Falling in the direction of a ritualized, primitive free jazz, some will find THE UGHS startling and unpleasant, while others will appreciate the humanity and beauty underlying its rough surface. Regardless, no longer cloaked in the darkness of midnight, THE UGHS is unlike anything ever recorded by The Residents.

The Ughs
The Dancing Duck
Floating Down the Nile, Part 2
Squeaky Wheels
The Lonely Lotus
Rendering the Bacon
The Horns of Hanynesville
The Wondering Jew
Charlie Chan
In The Dark