Interview: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

by Jeremiah Griffey

The El Rey Theatre stands within the realm of the ritzy Beverly Hills district of Los Angeles. Cleaner than most parts of the largely forsaken city, this part of Wilshire Blvd. screams money and excess. That makes the hodgepodge sea of Hardcore punks, fashion hipsters and skuzzy metalheads standing in front of the venue all the more curious.

They’re here to see the enigmatic Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, a band of former music composition majors, actors, world-class musicians and lyrical visionaries who created an entire fictional mythology about black mathematicians and “Futurists” when they started the band. Each member brings incalculable resources to the table, adding to their diverse appeal. Nils Frykdahl carries a signature growl and stirringly gruff falsetto. Violinist Carla Kihlstedt comes armed with an angelic voice that cuts through the band’s demonic instrumentation. Bassist Dan Rathbun builds some of the band’s unique instruments, including The Electric Pancreas. Drummer Matthias Bossi steadies their compositions and often plays the role of narrator when the band feels a little more theatrically inclined. Multi-instrumentalist Michael Mellender, well, he just needs to be seen at work. It’s rather indescribable.

Just around the corner from the venue, the band sits in wait on their “Green Machine” a school bus they converted into a living and touring space, complete with a working stove. While discussing their ominous new album, “In Glorious Times” (The End) everybody works on decorating this evening’s homemade garments and nibbles at a group Toblerone candy bar.

You named the new record “In Glorious Times”. Could talk about what those glorious times may be? Current, past?
Nils: It’s more of an internal state of mind. It’s a reference to one of the songs. It’s a lyric in the opening track called “The Companions”. In it, the companions, the unnamed, unspecified companions want to join us in our glorious times. And when they start to laugh, we’ll laugh too. When they start to cry, they’ll ruin it for everyone and we’ll ask them to leave. And they’ll pull out their knives and kill us all. “Glorious times” refers to various things, but in that particular instance, the precarious situation of the world today. Of our feebly tottering society. Also, the word “glorious” is a reference to death. Glory, in the old church liturgical sense of passing into another state. In “glory” is to be dead.

So the album sticks with themes you’ve tackled in the past?
Nils: Yeah. Societal precariousness and death being themes that we’ve tackled in the past (laughs). This album might have more explicit meditations on death.

Does that have to do with personal issues, like aging?
Nils: It has to do with, in my case – and affecting all of us – my brother and band artist Per Frykdahl who died a little over a year ago (growing quiet). That affected songwriting that was going on and colored material that had just been written and made it sound very different.

So, musically did you guys go in a heavier strain than usual, or in a more melodic direction like “Phthisis” [from “Of Natural History (Web of Mimicry)”
Carla: Yes and yes.
Nils: It’s probably less humorous than “Of Natural History” overall. That had a bit more playful irony in it.

When I interviewed Dawn (from Faun Fables), she talked about how she feels anachronistic to this world. She feels she could belong to a different place and time, and I get the same vibe from you, given your interest in different mythologies and philosophies. Can you talk about whether or not you’re supposed to be here right now?
Nils: There’s a lot of feeling of being out of step with the world, but on the other hand, I see Sleepytime as a response to this particular time and place and crisis. The dissonance of Sleepytime, the abrasiveness of it and the sonic repertoire, while it may not be very 2007 in terms of resources – there’s no digital sampling or anything like that – it is a sound that could have been made in…
Michael: The late 1800s.
Nils: No, it couldn’t have been made before the heavy amps of the ‘90s. In a way, drawing as we do on large electronic amplification resources, we are a modern band, though we certainly have yearnings for other times. They may be romanticized to a certain extent. We acknowledge that.
Carla: Imagine doing our tours in a horse and buggy?
Nils: We may have to. How many more times are we going to be able to take this green machine around the country. I’m not counting on it.

All of you have very interesting musical backgrounds. What draws you to a heavier, rawer sound than say, some of the classical influences and composers you’re influenced by?
Carla: It’s kind of a misnomer that classical music is dainty and elegant and light. Check out any of the Bartok string quartets. Some of the most extreme and majestically dark music comes out of the classical tradition, so that doesn’t seem like a break to me.
Nils: The reason for not having this ensemble try to be a version of something that would be based out of that world, is partly that the forums you move within and the audiences you play for, the cultural trappings of that world – playing this tour we are playing for a certain select audience that we have sort of cultivated in some way around the country – it is a much broader audience than we would have cultivated in the university-based music world. That is a really small audience. The whole pool of it is, unfortunately because there’s a lot of great work being done, a very small group of grad students, professors, highly educated folks. Within six months of playing with your crappy rock band you can have ten times as many people in an area hear your music and be served by it. It’s more populist.
Dan: That’s both the advantage and disadvantage of the “rock” genre. Everyone can do it. The bad thing is that anyone can do it. There are one million rock bands out there, because there’s nothing to keep them from doing it.
Nils: I love that there’s totally shitty rock bands out there.
Michael: You get to practice your instrument in front of people. As a composer sometimes you lose that edge. I don’t know if I could ever give up playing for an audience.
Carla: I got commissioned to write a piece for the Bang on a Can All-Stars a few years back. It was so difficult and it reminded me why this is so much more satisfying. It was really challenging in a way that I don’t care to repeat. To give people parts…
Nils: And hope you heard it right in your head.
Carla: To recreate and have the generosity to create what you heard in your head. It reminded me of how lucky we are.

sleepytimegorillamuseum.com

2007 In Glorious Times (The End)
2004 Of Natural History (Web of Mimicry)
2001 Grand Opening and Closing (Seeland)