SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM — Grand Opening and Closing (review)

SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM — Grand Opening and Closing album cover

Album · 2001 · Avant-garde Metal

4.5/5 · 2024-02-23
siLLy puPPy

One of the most ambitious and interesting progressive acts of recent decades, the Oakland, CA based SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM emerged as the next logical procession in the ever increasing complexities that started all the way back in the 1980s from a band called Acid Rain turned Idiot Flesh. Originally the fertile ground for the demented musical minds of Nils Frykdahl, Dan Rathburn, Gene Jun and David Shamrock, the original Acid Rain evolved into the fully developed performance art troupe Idiot Flesh which found Shamrock stepping out but Frykdahl, Rathburn and Jun taking their crazy roller coaster ride of musical ideas to the next level.

As Idiot Flesh these experimentalists took on the idea of Dadaism and surrealism as the basis for their musical expressions and incorporated everything but the kitchen sink (and then that too!) to their bizarre musical concoctions. To say that IDIOT FLESH wasn’t obsessed with unbridled creativity would be a gross understatement but the band went from a rather loosely based level of freakery on the 1992 debut “Tales of Instant Knowledge and Sure Death” to stunning precision and avant-prog technical proficiency by the time it reached its third and final album “Fancy” in 1997. The stage was set for whatever was to come next and what came next emerged two years later with the creation of SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM.

Taking the essence of Idiot Flesh and elevating it to even further sophistication, Frykdahl, Rathbun and Shamrock reunited and invited some other stellar talents to the freak party. Violinist Carla Kihlstedt of Charming Hostess, another project of Frykdahl joined forces along with Vacuum Tree Head members percussionist Moel Staiano and multi-instrumentalist Michael Mellender aka The Lower Animals. The band developed a strange mythology around a fictitious museum created by Dadaists and Futurists that was named the Sleeptime Gorilla Press. Deemed the museum of the future it was to exhibit anti-artifacts, non-history and surrealist’s visionary exhibits. The museum supposedly opened on June 22, 1916 but a certain exhibit which consisted of fire caused chaos and destruction on the day the museum opened thus the source of the title for the band’s debut release GRAND OPENING AND GRAND CLOSING.

This mythology encompasses both the band’s musical ethos and Dadaist approach. The band’s first concert was also on June 22 only 83 years later and thus the band’s debut release GRAND OPENING AND GRAND CLOSING was born and released in 2001 after two years of meticulous creativity being infused into its wild and adventurous set of 9 tracks that encompasses 58 1/2 minutes of playing time. Of course the album doesn’t represent their theatrical live shows that evolved from the Idiot Flesh years. SGM continued the elaborate routines ranging from erudite fictitious readings from Dada artists and mathematicians to all sorts of bizarre unexpected surprises. Nevertheless, the band proved a musical competence almost unmatched in the world of unusually experimental music.

While SGM is a direct descendent of Idiot Flesh, there are a few distinctions that elevated SGM into the next arena. First of all the violin techniques of Carla Kihlstedt added an entirely missing dimension. Secondly the inclusion of extreme metal to the mix added an entire world of contrast that added yet another missing aspect. Thirdly the band’s unique chemistry allowed everything to gel into an extremely cohesive manner where exquisitely demanding compositional fortitude merged perfectly into the world of virtuosic technicalities which all fit in perfectly with alternative tunings, demented musical scales and of course all those brilliant self-made instruments crafted by Rathbun that added even more diversity to the Idiot Flesh paradigm. Needless to say, SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM took the world of avant-garde metal by complete surprise in 2001 and through the course of three albums set the bar so high that few have even dared to attempt to recreate anything resembling this demanding and divinely inspired music magic.

“Rock Against Rock” was the band’s motto and indeed GRAND OPENING AND GRAND CLOSING fits the bill with its unique infusion of avant-prog, experimental metal, industrial, avant-folk and freakazoid madness. Rock In Opposition of the highest magnitude, SGM cites such disparate forces as King Crimson, Swans, Stravinsky, Thinking Plague, Univers Zero, Henry Cow, Einstürzende Neubauten, Art Bears and even metal acts such as Mayhem not to mention funk rock acts like the Red Hot Chili Peppers as inspiration for its strange amalgamation of weirdness. It’s doesn’t take long to hear how original the SGM really is with the opening “Sleep Is Wrong” which immediately unleashes a plethora of time signature workouts, vocal harmony tradeoffs, contrasts in folky passages and industrial metal heft. Passive violins cede to dissonant metal chord bombast and moments of self-made percussive interludes nurture group harmony workouts in the spirit of classic Gentle Giant only in a style that is SGM through and through.

As the album continues it only gets more ambitious with the following track “Ambugaton” indulging in a prog metal workout. One of the secrets of the SGM is that all the members were active in the songwriting process as well as being performing artists and multi-instrumentalists making the music some of the most diverse far-reaching soundscapes progressive music has to offer. “Ablutions” written by Carla Kihlstedt takes on a totally different demeanor than the previous tracks with an Art Bears type vocal style augmented by a moody dulcimer and a dark atmospheric backdrop. Despite all the unhinged complexities the band wasn’t adverse to more straightforward rockers which comes in the form of “1997 (Tonight We're Gonna Party Like It’s...)" which is about as “normal” as the band gets but even this track couldn’t resist breaking into oddball time signature workouts and avant-metal savagery.

The secret to the album’s freshness is how each track offers a completely different glimpse into the strange musical universe of the SGM’s own making. While the succinct instrumental “The Miniature” provides the perfect minute-long interlude in avant-folk spender, the Frykdahl penned “Powerless” provides a canvass for his all-encompassing talent for crafting exquisitely designed compositions. He has mastered the art of subtle build-ups, dramatic dynamic shifts and thundering crescendoes that all fit within an avant-framing of a classical composed oeuvre. He demonstrates clearly that he has indeed created a completely new musical paradigm that remains utterly unclassifiable except for the usual “experimental” or “avant” tagging.

The album’s complexities just seem to ratchet up into unthinkable proportions culminating in the avant-angularity metal magnum opus “The Strain” but the album offers a bit of relief with the last two tracks which chill out a bit. The track “"Sleepytime (Spirit Is a Bone)” takes its sweet time in its 10-minute plus running time to get started but offers a nice little lullaby effect before unleashing the album’s last hoorah of SGM wizardry. The only track that falters on the entire album is the closing “Sunflower” which is more of soul pacifying mechanism rather than a proper track. It is basically an 8-minute meditative chiming of a dulcimer that simply resonates in various ways without ever developing. Given that it’s the final track it’s easily skippable and personally i find it to be an acceptable palette cleanser after the density and darkness of the album’s maniacal meandering through the extremes of time signature workouts, metal bombast and avant-garde Dadaism, it isn’t a big deal.

What an amazing achievement GRAND OPENING AND GRAND CLOSING was in 2001 and remains so to this very day. This and the following album are two of my favorite albums of all time and needless to say SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM is a top 10 band. These creative geniuses somehow coalesced their talents with all egos in check for the greater good of making music so magical that i still can’t believe it exists. This is the type of music that you can instantly love due to the accessible hooks but can delve deeper and further into all the complexities that allow you to interpret the album in completely new ways. It’s the onion peel effect and each layer contributes to an overall aspect that creates a much larger than life musical experience. The original album featured 9 tracks but releases on The End label featured two bonus studio tracks and a live rendition of “Powerless” and they are all decent and worthy but not as essential. This is a bonafide masterpiece with the sole exception of the final track “Sunflower.” But even that track works in the album’s context so doesn’t bother me one teeny bit.