Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

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Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
Promotional Photo
Promotional Photo
Background information
Origin Flag of United States Oakland, California, United States
Genre(s) Art Rock
Experimental Music
Theatre
Performance Art
Years active 1999–Present
Label(s) The End Records
Website Official website
Members
Matthias Bossi
Nils Frykdahl
Carla Kihlstedt
Michael Mellender
Dan Rathbun
Former members
Frank Grau
David Shamrock
Moe! Staiano

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (often abbreviated to SGM) are an American avant-rock band, formed in 1999 in Oakland, California.

Contents

[edit] Performance and Stage Persona

The band tours frequently. They have played often in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles Area, but also have travelled other parts of the U.S. by tour bus. Their live performances have featured puppet shows, pseudo-scientific scholarly presentations, and performances by members of the Butoh group inkBoat.

The band uses many homemade devices as instruments, such as the Viking Rowboat.[1] Dan Rathbun—who has created most of the band's idiosyncratic instruments—plays, among other self-made instruments (though he uses a common bass guitar most of the time), a custom-stringed bass instrument referred to as Piano Log, which uses piano strings and is possibly more than 7 feet long; it is played with two sticks: one in the left hand generally used as a fret, and another in the right hand to strike the strings. Percussionist Michael Mellender's instruments consist of restaurant kitchen equipment, trash can lids, and other "found" metal objects, in addition to traditional percussion instruments. One of the more infamous instruments used by the band was Moe! Staiano's Popping Turtle (now residing in Brooklyn, NY[2]). It can be heard about 1:21 into the song "Sleep is Wrong".

SGM's music can be roughly likened as something akin to avant-rock or avant-prog, but it practically escapes any rigorous categorization so that people usually have to name-drop different kinds of bands in order to give some sort of scope or conception of what they sound like. Some names that have come up in reviewers' texts include Mr. Bungle, Thinking Plague, Univers Zéro, White Zombie, Änglagård, King Crimson, GWAR, and so on;[3] while not excessively naming bands in his review of SGM's second album Of Natural History, David Moore of Pitchfork Media thinks, in the same swoop, that SGM's debut album Grand Opening and Closing was an amalgam of Meshuggah and Secret Chiefs 3, resulting in "some truly cracked prog-metal anthems."[4]

As of January 2006, the band has signed to The End Records and plans to release a new album entitled In Glorious Times in March 2007.[1] A reissue Grand Opening and Closing, with three previously unreleased tracks, was released on September 5, 2006.[5]

The band will be touring across the United States and Europe in March and April. They are slated to appear with Secret Chiefs 3 for most of the US shows. [6]

[edit] Discography

  • Grand Opening and Closing CD (2001)
  • Live CD (2003)
  • Of Natural History CD (2004)
  • Knormalities vol. 3: Posthumorities limited edition 45" vinyl (2005, Dephine Knormal Musik)
    • This record features the track "SPQR", a cover of the song by This Heat.
  • The Face (DVD) DVD
    • with Shinichi Momo Koga
  • Grand Opening and Closing reissue with 3 bonus tracks (2006)

[edit] Trivia

  • SGM claim to have performed their first live gig in front of an audience that consisted of a single banana slug and their friends.[7]

[edit] Members

[edit] Former members

  • Frank Grau – drums (2001-2004))
  • David Shamrock – drums (1999-2001)
  • Moe! Staiano – percussion (1999-2004)

[edit] Related Projects

  • The Book of Knots (Bossi; 2004)
    • Kihlstedt appears on one cut.
    • Arclight Records (AR05)
  • Charming Hostess (Frykdahl, Rathbun, Kihlstedt; 1998–2001)
  • Faun Fables (Frykdahl; 1999-present)
  • Idiot Flesh (Fryldahl, Rathbun; 1985-1999)
  • Immersion Composition Society (Mellender (co-founder), Rathbun, Kihlstedt, Bossi; 2001–present)
  • inkBoat (Frykdahl, Rathbun)
  • MOE!KESTRA! (Staiano; 1997–present)
  • Mute Socialite (Staiano's latest new band; 2006-present)
  • Skeleton Key (Bossi)
  • Species Being (Grau)
  • Thin Pillow (Shamrock; 2004)
    • Kihlstedt appears on two cuts
    • Includes alternate arrangement of "Ambugaton", performed by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum on Grand Opening and Closing
  • Thinking Plague (Shamrock)
  • Tin Hat (formerly Tin Hat Trio) (Kihlstedt; 2000–present)
  • Two Foot Yard (Kihlstedt; 2005–present)

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b http://www.sleepytimegorillamuseum.com/history.html
  2. ^ http://www.sleepytimegorillamuseum.com/moe/sleepytimegorillamuseum.html
  3. ^ http://www.progreviews.com/reviews/display.php?rev=sgm-goac
  4. ^ http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/22317/Sleepytime_Gorilla_Museum_Of_Natural_History
  5. ^ http://www.sleepytimegorillamuseum.com/news.html
  6. ^ http://www.sleepytimegorillamuseum.com/shows.html
  7. ^ "The first performance of the revived SGM, June 22 1999, was done for the benefit of a single banana-slug in an abandoned Newberry's department store in downtown Oakland. Humans were allowed the following night." (Grand Opening and Closing, liner notes, p. 112.)

[edit] External links

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