Species Being's drummer Frank Grau also plays in Sleepytime Gorilla Museum with
vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Nils Frykdahl
and bassist Dan Rathbun of Idiot Flesh,
violinist/vocalist Carla Kihlstedt of Tin Hat Trio,
and found-object percussionist Moe Staiano.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (that declare an influence from the apocryphal studies of a philosopher/mathematician of the 19th century, John Kane) basically continued Idiot Flesh's mission.
Rathbun's home-made instruments and his visceral playing dominate the mutating
pieces of their debut
album, Grand Opening And Closing (Seeland, 2001 - The End, 2007).
Opening track Sleep Is Wrong is emblematic of their art-collage of
Art Bears' convoluted prog-rock jamming, operatic/cabaret vocals,
loud industrial/grindcore guitar riffs and rhythmic humour.
Faithful to Idiot Flesh's unpredictability, the loud and ferocious
1997 straddles the line between grindcore and funk-metal.
Contradictions coexist in the nine-minute psychodrama
Powerless, where found objects duet with
a animal Nine Inch Nail-ish rant,
and shrill vocals punctuate the hard-rock impetus.
Rathbun's Stain is a post-rock feast of convoluted tempos.
The sprawling Sleepytime (for multiple dulcimers and vocals)
musical radio play, the male and female voice conversing
over a dense tapestry of tinkling percussions, before turning into a
soaring middle-eastern dance with apocalyptic overtones.
But the band has a second life as a quasi-classical ensemble.
The instrumental Ambugaton is a delicate concerto of string instruments,
one of the most gentle and sprightly of the album, the melody sounding like
one of Zappa's orchestral scores.
Kihlstedt's Ablutions is a lied set to dissonant music with a backdrop
of Japanese folk music and free noise.
And Sunflower is zen chamber music for percussion instruments.
There are enough ideas in this album to fill nine albums, one per track.
Of Natural History (Web of Mimicry, 2005) did the same things but in
much less spontaneous way.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum added a melodramatic emphasis worthy of
In The Nursery to
In Glorious Times (2007), while the musicianship reached jarring,
convoluted peaks reminiscent of
King Crimson.
The mini-opera The Companions plays tragic vocals, distorted carillons,
Spanish trumpets and a martial pace against each other.
Puppet Show flirts with both Carl Orff's Carmina Burana and
Henry Cow-esque progressive rock.
The Only Dance does the same with
Kurt Weill's expressionist cabaret and
Art Bears-esque lieder.
Formicary is a
ballad with atonal guitar, syncopated rhythm and countless tempo/mood shifts.
On the other hand, Helpless Corpses Enactment and Ossuary
borrow the growl and the epileptic rhythm from death-metal.
The eight-minute Carla Kihlstedt personal show (and album stand-out)
Angle of Repose
sets quirky female vocals a` la Bjork on fire
in a devilish crescendo with gypsy violin.
Another highlight is the seven-minute The Greenless Wreath, an
ethereal prayer-like shaped by sustained wails and wavering instruments.
The problem is that often the band does not seem to know what to do with the
brilliant ideas they put forth. A good (bad) example is the
nine-minute The Salt Crown.
The Book Of Knots are
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's drummer
Matthias Bossi, Joel Hamilton, Tin Hat Trio's violinist Carla Kihlstedt, and
Pere Ubu's bassist Tony Maimone.
They debuted with
The Book of Knots (Arclight, 2007) a historical concept album about
fishermen in the 19th century.
Traineater (Anti, 2007) contains 14 exercises in creating
spasmodic atmospheres.
View From The Watertower is a slow chaotic six-minute dirge with delirious vocals and Captain Beefheart-ian atonal sub-blues jamming.
Red Apple Boy is a twisted lullaby a` la David Thomas with demented twang and neoclassical strings.
The pre-gospel collective chant Pray sounds like it's being played on
kitchen tools by marching townfolks.
The distorted operatic vocals and instruments, the skipping beats and the detached sample of Hands Of Production evoke the satiric operettas of early Residents.
On the other hand, Traineater is
a quiet meditation for female folksinger, and the tense Salina
is how Alanis Morissette would sound
in a mental asylum.
They quickly run out of ideas and start mumbling over trivial
jam-oriented music, but what works is truly grandiose in its un-grandiose
scope, including
the funny musique concrete of Walker Percy Evans High School that
closes the proceedings.
Cameos include Zeena Parkins, Doug Henderson, Carla Bozlulich, David Thomas, Jon Langford, Mike Watt.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's multi-instrumentalist Nils Frykdahl is also
active in Faun Fables.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's drummer Moe Staiano
released solo albums for found percussion such as
The Non-Study Of First Impressions (Dephine Knormal Musik, 1997) and
The Lateness Of Yearly Presentations (Amanita, 2001). He also
formed his Moe!kestra that debuted with
An Inescapable Siren Within Earshot Distance Therein And Other Whereabouts - Two Compositions For Large Orchestras (Amanita, 2006), containing Piece No. 7 (2003),
followed by
Two Forms Of Multitudes - Conducted Improvisations (Dephine Knormal Musik, 2005) and
The Absolute Tradition Of No Traditions (PsychForm, 2007).
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