Sleepytime Gorilla Museum have just shared a new lyric video for “El Evil,” dedicated to a late Tony Gallegos, a.k.a. Bunny Man. It comes from their latest studio album of the Last Human Being, the very first release on the Avant Night record label – a new imprint headed by Nick Ohler and facilitated by Joyful Noise Recordings. Catch the new video and more in the article below.
Order of the Last Human Being here.
Nils Frykdahl recalls, “The refrain of “El Evil” is borrowed from the Idiot Flesh song “Let the Dog Sing” (recorded in 1998 but soon to be released). At a show in Fresno, Tony had joined us in his Bunny Man costume. A drunken bar patron kept yelling “Hey, let the dog sing!” Only near the end of the show did we realize he thought Tony was a dog. Gracias to his family in Norwalk for years of hospitality. Nothing will outshine.”
Back in 2011, amid cries of protest and disbelief, the Museum closed its doors and disbanded indefinitely. Persistent rumors about a posthumous album flew across Sleepytime’s global community for years before eventually settling into the tall grass of time like a swarm of cicadas at summer’s end. “Sperm swam. Eggs applauded. Babies hatched. Other bands were born,” recalls curator Matthias Bossi. Labels and alliances perished. Ailments festered. Several beloved friends and family members passed away. “The SGM fields lay fallow for a decade and more.” Only now, a baker’s dozen years later, is the buzz rising once again.
The Museum — comprised of multi-instrumentalists and rotating vocalists Nils Frykdahl, Carla Kihlstedt, Michael “Iago” Mellender, Matthias Bossi, and Dan Rathbun — plays an arsenal of instruments ranging from the somewhat standard (drums, electric guitars, bass, electric violin) to the rare (bass harmonica, nyckelharpa, marxophone) to the homemade (slide-piano log, electric pancreas, pedal-action wiggler). The group has consistently evaded easy categorization, garnering accolades from across the aisles of contemporary classical music, prog rock, industrial music, metal, avant-garde improv, and more. Their music, in turns bashing and bucolic, enveloping and unsettling, tends towards long-form epics interspersed with mysterious field recordings.
“As this slow-rolling planetwide Anthropocene Extinction event deepens, Sleepytime’s work has only grown more resonant, more prescient,” offers Mer Yayanos, current symposiarch and secretary of the Museum’s long standing social math club, the John Kane Society. “What better time for them to Bring Back the Apocalypse than right now, with a new full-length record that integrates the past and the future?”
“A kind of buzzing warmth stirs in my belly,” says SGM co-founder Carla Kihlstedt. “Partly, it’s the re-kindling of old friendships, but it’s also the connectivity of reigniting a community, an ethos, and a commitment to creative and independent expression, and to vibrant collectivism. I believe in every messy molecule of SGM, from its many heads to its stinky toes, from its music to its wandering soul. How lucky are we to return to the hive after all these years?!”
of the Last Human Being tracklisting:
01 Salamander In Two Worlds
02 Fanfare for the Last Human Being
03 El Evil
04 Bells for Kith and Kin
05 Silverfish
06 S.P.Q.R.
07 We Must Know More
08 The Gift
09 Hush, Hush
10 Save It!
11 Burn Into Light
12 Old Grey Heron
13 Rose-Colored Song
Alongside the release of their long-awaited album, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum has embarked on a lengthy 2024 tour, including two nights at the legendary Stanley Hotel (yes, the very location where The Shining was filmed). Find more information and tickets here.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum live:
03/07 – Denver, CO – The Bluebird w/Dreadnought, Surplus 1980 (feat. Moe Staiano)
03/08 – Estes Park, CO – The Stanley Hotel w/Dreadnought, Surplus 1980 (feat. Moe Staiano), The Parlour Trick
03/09 – Estes Park, CO – The Stanley Hotel w/ In the Company of Serpents, Playground Ensemble, The Parlour Trick, Arone Dyer’s Dronechoir
03/11 – Kansas City, MO – Record Bar w/ Season To Risk
03/12 – Minneapolis, MN – The Fine Line w/ Dead Rider, The Kind City
03/13 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall w/ Dead Rider, Cheer-Accident
03/14 – Indianapolis, IN – Irving Theater w/ Cheer-Accident, Isolation Tank Ensemble
03/15 – Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom w/ Lung, Isolation Tank Ensemble
03/16 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts w/ Zöe Keating, Stinking Lizaveta
03/17 – Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair w/ Singer Mali, Rong
03/18 – Brooklyn, NY – Elsewherew/ Arone Dyer, Knifethrower
03/19 – Baltimore, MD – The Ottobar w/ Titan to Tachyons
03/20 – Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle w/ Titan to Tachyons, Toybox Theatre
03/21-24 – Knoxville, TN – BIG EARS FESTIVAL
03/25 – Atlanta, GA – Terminal West w/ Faun Fables, The Holy Ghost Tabernacle Choir
03/26 – Winter Park, FL – Conduit w/ Faun Fables, Indorphine, Flagman
03/27 – Tampa, FL – Orpheum w/ Faun Fables, Indorphine, Flagman
03/28 – New Orleans, LA – Howlin’ Wolf w/ Faun Fables, Anareta
03/29 – Houston, TX – Secret Group w/ Faun Fables, Oceans of Slumber
03/30 – Austin, TX – The Mohawk w/ Faun Fables, Thor Harris Duo, Oceans of Slumber, Opposite Day, The Parlour Trick
03-31 – Dallas, TX – Trees w/ Pinkish Black, Faun Fables
04/02 – Albuquerque, NM – Sister Bar w/ Faun Fables
04/03 – Phoenix, AZ – The Crescent Ballroom w/ Faun Fables, Meet the Sun
04/04 – Tucson, AZ – 191 Toole w/ Faun Fables, Skin Theory
04/05 – Los Angeles, CA – The Fonda Theatre w/ Faun Fables
04/06 – Berkeley, CA – The UC Theatre w/ Faun Fables, Cassette Prophet, Surplus 1980, Kitka
More from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum:
The Sleepytime Gorilla Museum opened its doors to the public in 1916, only to show them a well-managed fire. Its doors were closed shortly thereafter and remained so for the rest of the century. Almost. The last year of the 20th century found the improbable trio of words once again adorning a placard posted outside a derelict urban building, with the addendum – “No Humans Allowed.” Indeed, the frenzied re-opening was witnessed by a lone banana slug (Ariolimax dolichophallus) from Joaquin Miller Park. The fine print announced that humans would be allowed the next night. And so, the next dozen years of music and entertainments would cater largely to human beings and their entourage of “hangers-on.”
Formed in 1999 in Oakland CA by musicians that had played together in Idiot Flesh, Charming Hostess, and Acid Rain: David Shamrock, Carla Kihlstedt, Dan Rathbun, and Nils Frykdahl, who were agreed that percussion-tornado Moe! Staiano would sharpen up the attack. They carried on the message of Rock Against Rock – more a form of behavior than a true set of principles or a music genre- inspired by the hard-to-put-down work of the original Museum: Futurist Lala Rolo, and Black-Mathematician John Kane.
The release of their debut album, Grand Opening and Closing (2001), which opens with “Sleep is Wrong,” a song they would play a little differently at every show for the next decade, initiated years of incessant touring, spearheaded by new drummer/manager Frank Grau, who benefited from coffee. In driving their large green bus through the vast uninhabited lands of North America, they became besotted with the places between: dry, green, inhuman, perfect. And so their second album, of Natural History (2004), was staged as a debate: the Futurists, with their 1909 celebration of speed and the noise of the machine, versus the Unabomber, a math professor who said “the human race with technology is like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine.” Frank played his last tour entirely in a donkey-head mask, before announcing his departure for a career in professional sports gambling, and Matthias Bossi came in to finish the album and join the band after being rescued by the green bus with his then-group Skeleton Key, who had crashed! Moe! left later that year, to be replaced by Michael “Iago” Mellender, who seems to play all instruments.
This line-up, still intact, released In Glorious Times in 2007, which opens with an invitation to trouble: “All the desperate people in this town are coming out tonight…They’ll be here soon.” This record, as all of their records, features the troubling and comical art of Per “Ward C. Picnic” Frykdahl, whose earthly struggles with an affable derangement had come to an end, but who left us with the injection to “spend more time possesed (sic.).“
For years before and during Sleepytime, its members had scurried and squawked as part of Ink Boat, a Butoh-dance troupe led by Shinichi Momo Koga. Their “Cockroach” piece lent its title song to the Natural History album, and Shinichi next joined SGM on tour, caged, poked and displayed as the “Last Human Being,” who, on more than one occasion “escaped” by walking across the sea of the audience. This led to recording part of an album and shooting a short film (directed by Max Baloian), greatly expanding on the stage show.
At the close of this decade of fecundity, many children arrived to swell the ranks of the already burgeoning Sleepytime family, and the group became awkwardly bi-coastal. At risk of becoming a “greatest hits” version of themselves, they announced a final series of shows in 2011, with the amicable intention of finishing the album and film. Life in its rich variety, lack of funds, a crashed hard drive, and a global pandemic made work on these projects sporadic. Rabbit Rabbit Radio, Faun Fables, Free Salamander Exhibit and the Immersion Composition Society kept the band members off (or on) the streets for a dozen years. But the very ubiquity of cyber-technology, lambasted in “The Gift” on the new album, has made possible this finishing of album and film, spearheaded by the crowd-funding virtuosity of Meredith Yayanos and Mallory McAvoy, with Nick and Anya Ohler‘s new label Avant Night set to release the record with a U.S. tour in the spring of 2024.
“Writhing in the old bliss Never forget this
Reeling in the sweet grip Never let this slip
Your eyes are yours to close Never let go Sleep is Wrong”
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum of the Last Human Being – credits:
Most of these recordings were started at Polymorph in Oakland, CA in 2010-11. Additional overdubs in the intervening years were done at Polymorph and in home studios across the land. “S.P.Q.R.” was entirely recorded and mixed at Polymorph in 2004 (previously released as a 7” on Dephine Knormal Musik). “Hush, Hush” and “El Evil” were recorded at Polymorph and home studios in 2023. Photos and film stills from the film The Last Human Being: A Critical Assessment, directed by Max Baloian, featuring Shinichi Iova Koga
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