[2] The Cryptic Corporation has confirmed that their archives contain many tapes dating back decades, but because they were recorded before the group officially became the Residents, the band did not consider them part of its discography.

The cover art for the tape box was a silk-screened copy of an old photo depicting a woman fellating a small child, an example of the extremely confrontational and deliberately puerile visual and lyrical style the group adopted during this period.

In early 1972, the band left San Mateo and relocated to 20 Sycamore St, San Francisco; a studio they named "El Ralpho", which boasted a completely open ground floor (seemingly ideal for a sound stage), allowing the group to expand their operations and also begin preliminary work on their most ambitious project up to that point, a full-length film entitled Vileness Fats, which consumed most of their attention for the next four years.

The four songs were presented as being by four different bands (Ivory & the Braineaters, Delta Nudes, the College Walkers, and Arf & Omega featuring the Singing Lawnchairs), with only a small note on the interior of the gatefold sleeve mentioning the participation of "Residents, Uninc."

The Residents gave Reinhardt exclusive access to all their recordings, including copies of the original masters of Stuffed Trigger, Baby Sex, and The Warner Bros.

[9] Following "Satisfaction", the group began recording Eskimo in April 1976; a concept album based upon the Theory of Phonetic Organisation that suggests that music should not be confined to chords and structures, but instead should simply be a collection of fascinating noises.

Following the release of George & James, the Residents finally abandoned part three of the Mole Trilogy, choosing instead to record a fourth entry entitled The Big Bubble, featuring very stripped-down instrumentation in order to portray a fictional garage rock band.

Following the release of the 13th Anniversary Show LP in 1986 and a cover of "Hit the Road Jack" in 1987, the Cryptic Corporation resigned control of Ralph Records over to Tom & Sheenah Timony, and the Residents signed to Rykodisc.

On November 18, 1987, at a party in Amsterdam for Boudisque Records, the Residents' European label, they premiered a new work titled Buckaroo Blues, a suite of cowboy songs.

Despite majorly occupying themselves with CD-ROM development, the Residents still remained musically active, releasing an enhanced CD album titled Gingerbread Man (an observation and study of nine fictional characters) in 1994, and scoring the Discovery Channel documentary series Hunters in 1995.

While her first appearance in a Residents project was the Gingerbread Man album, she officially became a member of the group in 1997, with a one-off performance at the Popkomm festival in Germany titled Disfigured Night.

Due to the increasing numbers of illegal downloads of music on the Internet, which considerably decreased product sales, the Residents attempted a new artistic medium: the radio drama, in the form of a paid podcast distributed through Apple's iTunes service.

[23] Aside from Animal Lover, the group's partnership with Mute produced three more albums: Tweedles in 2006 (a first-person character study of a sexually successful yet emotionally unavailable vampiric figure), The Voice of Midnight in 2007 (a retelling of the E.T.A.

Making a decision to shift focus from studio work to touring, and to enhance their show's portability, the Residents changed their live band to a "power trio" formation, and in a sort of meta stunt, appear to "unmask" themselves as lead singer / frontman "Randy," composer / keyboardist "Charles 'Chuck' Bobuck," and guitarist Nolan Cook as "Bob" – although all three band members were still costumed: "Randy" donned an old man mask and wore an overcoat with oversized red tie and shoes; "Chuck" and "Bob" wore red jackets, special goggles and fake dreadlocks.

In the next couple of years, "Randy" took on an increased role as frontman of the band, starting a "personal" Tumblr blog[31] where he wrote mostly about life experiences and trivia regarding the Residents' history, as well as promoting his "solo" show, Sam's Enchanted Evening, which was presented in various incarnations between June 2010 and March 2012 with collaborators Joshua Raoul Brody and Carla Fabrizio.

In 2014, "Randy" maintained a series of vlogs with the help of director Don Hardy, titled In My Room and later Randyland, elaborating further on his experiences, both with the Residents and with events in his personal life.

He eventually quit the Residents altogether in 2016, revealing his identity as Hardy Fox of the Cryptic Corporation, and continued to make music as a solo artist until his death in October 2018.

Shadowland then toured from August 2015 to July 2016,[36] with Eric Drew Feldman (as Bobuck's cousin "Rico") replacing Fox on keyboards, as well as production on future Residents projects.

The show was mostly similar to the previous two tours, with a setlist of various reworked songs from the group's repertoire, and occasional video interludes in the vein of Talking Light, with different characters discussing their experiences with birth, reincarnation and near-death.

Shortly after a preview of their In Between Dreams tour in Japan, the group released their first studio album since Coochie Brake, titled The Ghost of Hope, describing real train wreck stories from the 19th and early 20th century.

The album was released on Cherry Red Records, the Residents' current label, and promoted with a single, and their first music video since 2001's Icky Flix – "Rushing Like a Banshee," directed by John Sanborn.

The book, entitled The Brick-Eaters, was described as "an absurdist buddy movie story featuring a very tall internet content screener teaming up with an aging career criminal whose primary companions are an oxygen bottle and a .44 Magnum".

[48] Simon Reynolds wrote in his book Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984 that "the Residents and their representatives were one and the same,"[49] and elaborated further on one of his blogs, stating that "this was something that anybody who had any direct dealings with Ralph figured out sooner rather than later."

[57] He had previously been credited as the lighting designer on the Mole Show Roxy LP,[58] and as engineer on original versions of Stars & Hank Forever,[59] as well as on reissues of The Tune of Two Cities[60] and The Snakey Wake.

During the band's formative years, its main members consisted of 'the Singing Resident', Hardy Fox, jazz pianist James Whittaker, and bassist Bob Tagney, the latter two credited as writers on the 2018 LP release of The Warner Brothers album.

Also in 1976, drummer Don Jakovich started working with the band, making credited appearances on Satisfaction,[80] Fingerprince,[75] Snakefinger's Chewing Hides the Sound,[81] and Commercial Album.

[83] Following the disbanding of Henry Cow, former members Chris Cutler and Fred Frith began making appearances on Residents material as drummer and guitarist respectively.

For The Mole Show, the Residents employed four dancers: Kathleen French, Carol Werner LeMaitre, Sarah McLennan Walker and Chris Van Ralte.

[113] The line-up of collaborators as featured on the Residents' 2020 album Metal Meat & Bone includes Eric Drew Feldman, Carla Fabrizio, Nolan Cook, Peter Whitehead, and Sivan Lioncub.

[114] The Residents' albums generally fall into two categories: deconstructions of Western popular music, and complex conceptual pieces composed around a theme, theory or plot.