A Maze of Jigsaws is the second track from The Residents' 10th studio album, The Tunes of Two Cities. It is an intentionally off-putting introduction to Mole music that follows the relatively easy-listening Serenade For Missy.
Background[]
Following on from the release of the Mark of The Mole, The Residents began to develop the album's rich fantasy setting even further and, aided by the newly released EMU Emulators, created two sets of 6 tracks depicting the type of music the Moles and Chubs create.
The result was The Tunes of Two Cities, an album for which The Residents took advantage of two approaches to the Emu-s sampling capability. The Chub's tracks were based on the Emu's ability to sample instruments, and thus created easy-listening big band jazz-inspired tracks, while The Moles' songs sampled typically non-musical sounds, thus creating a more abstract and primitive style of music.
'A Maze of Jigsaws' is the second track on The Tunes of Two Cities and is an example of the Mole's music, following on from the Chub's Serenade for Missy. The song is notably sung in mohelmot, the fictional language of the Moles, which would be featured more prominently on The Big Bubble album.
The track was later featured in the 2017 Best of compilation, 80 Aching Orphans.
Matt Howarth interpretation[]
Matt Howarth's Comix of Two Cities, published seven months after the album, depicts the cultural elements which inspired the Tunes songs as interpreted by Howarth, starting with A Maze of Jigsaws. Howarth depicts this as 'The Sand Mazes of Moaning Jigsaws,' vast deserts which 'The Keepers' (Chub mutants revered as Gods for their sense of humor) run through to maintain their absurdity in events often televised by The Chubs.
Since these deserts were above the surface, where Moles were forbidden to travel, Howarth implies the Maze of Jigsaws as a piece of Chub culture, maybe implying the Tunes track is a Mole's interpretation of the location after their migration.
Lyrics[]
[Booh booh]
Hey yah, beop a beot. Ai yea yahyop beot. Ehyo eyadeba do Ehyo badee
Releases[]
- The Tunes of Two Cities (1982)
- 80 Aching Orphans (2017)
- Mole Box (2019)
