The Brickeaters is a new departure for The Residents: a detective novel. Now there has certainly been crime in their work (most notable with 2005's River of Crime), and there was even a novel (Bad Day on the Midway), and one could even look toward Freak Show for an example of branching out to book-bound forms.

But what makes The Brickeaters different from those other literary asides is that it is not attached to an existing Residents project. The Brickeaters begins life as a novel - whether or not it spins off into another project is yet to be seen.

The story follows Franklin Blodgett, a writer from Los Angeles whose wife recently left him. He travels to Missouri to investigate a strange news item: an elderly man was found dead near a highway, with a loaded gun and an oxygen tank. Just weird enough to attract Frank's attention, and certainly far enough away to keep his mind off of his personal troubles. As he uncovers more of the story, it only gets more and more bizarre...

The Brickeaters is published by Process Media and was released on July 10, 2018.

"Anonymity is a paradox. In theory, it should deflect attention and create distance, but in practice it's a beguiling curiosity, stirring interest through deliberate mystery. By pushing people away, it pulls them in. The Residents are famous for being anonymous. What most people know about them is nobody knows who they are." -- Marc Masters for Pitchfork

The Brickeaters is an absurdist buddy movie of a story featuring a very tall and young internet content screener teamed up with an aging career criminal whose primary companions are an oxygen bottle and .44 Magnum. After a short crime spree cementing their unhinged parternship, they work together to prevent a middle-aged lottery winner from polluting the LA water supply with massive amounts of fluoride. Their adventures unfold via a wholly unreliable alcoholic narrator desperately avoiding the reality of spousal abandonment.

About the author: Alternately seen as a rock band, an arts collective, and a spirit, THE RESIDENTS are regarded as iconic in the world of experimental music. In addition to their groundbreaking work in the areas of trance, world fusion, electronica, punk, industrial and lounge music, the group has also been credited with being among the originators of performance art and music video. Their early videos are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and their Freak Show CD-Rom was featured in MOMA's "Looking at Music 3.0" exhibition. Their four-decade-long career has also taken them into the world of film and television music, having scored numerous films and TV series as well as several projects for MTV.