Hardy Fox, a driving force behind the Residents, an avant-garde band that playfully subverted the conventions of rock music for decades while insisting on anonymity, which the group maintained by performing in outlandish costumes, died on Oct. 30 at his home in San Anselmo, Calif. He was 73.

His husband, Steven Kloman, said the cause was glioblastoma.

The Residents were more than a band: They were performance and visual artists, critics and deconstructors of pop culture, and music video pioneers. Their cacophonous, gleefully absurdist music presaged forms of punk, new wave and industrial music.

The band found a following even though its work could be difficult, if not outright annoying.

“Strangled-sounding vocals have long been characteristic of their recordings, along with crunching electronic drones that retain a homemade, low-tech quality,” the New York Times pop music critic Robert Palmer wrote in 1986.

Mr. Fox said the group’s sound was rooted in traditional rock ’n’ roll and meant to challenge what the music had become.