{"title":"Sleepytime Gorilla Museum","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"triptych","title":"Triptych","description":"\u003cp\u003eA Triptych with Holes:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe year is 2026. \u003cstrong\u003eSleepytime Gorilla Museum\u003c\/strong\u003e was “born” on the eve of this century, little suspecting then that the 25th anniversary of its debut album, its \u003cem\u003eGrand Opening and Closing\u003c\/em\u003e, would be celebrated in a fascist-occupied country. The festivities have already begun. Even now, wooden boxes are being lovingly made by hand in the exact center of the formerly-united states, in Indiana, home of Avant Night Records and Joyful Noise Recordings. The primal smell of carefully-burnt wood betrays their intricate design: a Triptych unfolding to reveal all 3 of the foundational Museum records in gatefold double vinyl, previously only available as an import through Blood Music in the jolly socialist country of Finland, where the Museum’s desperate “freedom songs” must have seemed quaint indeed. Come home now, travelers, and see the fires in the lake country.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe beauty of discord, the battle over how the future will see the past, the slow intrusions of geology—the box will try to contain these things, but it will fail. They will get out. Even closed, the box has holes, intentional holes. The things—discord, battle, intrusions,… et cetera—are already out. The Museum, too, is lovingly made by hand, with intentional holes, and is already out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eContents:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThree gatefold double-LPs of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum’s seminal works \u003cem\u003eGrand Opening and Closing\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eOf Natural History\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eIn Glorious Times\u003c\/em\u003e on Gold swirl, Green swirl, and Oxblood swirl colored vinyl respectively\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eA limited edition hand-pulled screen-printed poster signed by the band, as well as two hand-bound booklets containing liner notes, lyrics, and other arcane curatoratorial rantings — both created by Odd Petals.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAll housed in a deluxe wooden box (hinged tri-fold, featuring die-cut and etched artwork)\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHand-numbered in a limited edition of 777\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eCo-released with our friends at Avant Night -- https:\/\/avantnight.org\/\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sleepytime Gorilla Museum","offers":[{"title":"Triptych Box Set + Digital (Three 2xLPs \"Grand Opening and Closing\", \"Of Natural History\", \"In Glorious Times\" plus booklets and signed poster in tri-fold wooden box w\/ etched and die-cut art. Hand-numbered out of 777. Instant download in AIFF\/MP3\/WAV)","offer_id":53996467683638,"sku":"JNR530_Triptych_Box_Set","price":270.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0844\/5451\/files\/JNR530BoxFrontMockup.jpg?v=1778014961"},{"product_id":"grand-opening-and-closing","title":"Grand Opening and Closing","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt should hardly be surprising that a band with the name Sleepytime Gorilla Museum would form in 1999, with the implied calm before the storm, the moment of drowsy reflection before the wave of history (which is still crashing upon us a quarter century later) arrived with its simple millennial message: Sleep is wrong. With 2000 looming, the band formed around a collective commitment to personal celebrations of the apocalypse, to be shared in the most inviting way with the broadest possible listenership. Their prior experience together, of moving through and\/or baiting audiences in Idiot Flesh and Charming Hostess in the 90’s, shaped their approach to the stage as a living theater, with a rehearsed precision of apparent chaos giving way to moments of actual chaos brought in on the shoes of the nightly audience. Carla had first met Nils and Dan backstage in San Francisco (Idiot Flesh with Mudwimin), bonding over a shared recognition of the future-rock promised by the Bartok string-quartets of the early 20th century (a legacy of the most globally apocalyptic era since the Black Plague).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTheir collaboration was cemented by drummer\/composer David Shamrock, who by then had overcome the trauma of his very first show with (pre-Idiot Flesh) Acid Rain at a backyard party in East Oakland which erupted into an all-out brawl from fence to fence. The lineup was completed after witnessing Moe! Staiano single-handedly force a sort of music out of a stageful of hit-able things and the walls themselves before destroying a tube-television and attempting to wear it. “This is just what we need,” they thought, and their West Oakland studio - ‘The Nursery’ - was soon pulsing with 5 over 3 and other polyrhythmic toe-tappers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn addition to Moe!’s metal-on-metal percussion and Carla’s intricately shimmering and crushing command of the 5-string electric violin, the pursuit of new sounds was furthered by Dan’s musical inventions: the Percussion Guitar (played by Carla), the Sledge-Hammer Dulcimer (with 6-foot-long bass-piano strings), and a shifting arsenal of others. This opened the door to a wide pallet of unlikely musical bedfellows, with the debut album raging from careening hard rock of “1997 (Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s…)” to the ghostly “Ablutions” and the quietly shining meditation of “Sunflower” (so unobtrusive that at their first SF show in ’99, the expectant audience talked through most of it as a barely-perceptible opening number until a helpful citizen shouted out, “This is it, man. This is what you paid your money for.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTheir most enduring audience sing-along also appears as the album’s 2nd track, with the single shout of a single word - “Ambugaton” (David’s mispronunciation of Hank Williams’ mispronunciation of ‘Armageddon’)!! Another staple of the set-list to this day, “Powerless,” appears on this expanded vinyl edition in both the original and a later live evolution (with later drummers Matthias Bossi and Michael Mellender, who also play on a bonus pair of contrasting Carla gems- “More Time” and “Flinch.”)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy the time this opening album was completed in 2001, David had moved (temporarily) to Missouri and been amicably replaced by Frank Grau, whose varied ambitions included co-releasing the album on his Chaosophy label and booking 9-week tours that brought the band to (almost) every city in the U.S., while cooking with hot oils on the moving bus!\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis first domestic vinyl release (at last!), on Avant Night and Joyful Noise Recordings, has been completely remastered by the Museum’s bassist and producer, Dan Rathbun, and is accompanied by the release of the 2nd and 3rd of their classic albums. The new live line-up, which broke ground on the European tour of 2025 and tours the U.S. this spring\/summer, completes the historical family circle with the drum throne being filled by Wes Anderson, who played with both Idiot Flesh and Charming Hostess. The reformed band is thrilled to find that the wrongness which pushed them to the very precipice of the 20th century is even wronger and feels more right today!\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmbugaton!\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sleepytime Gorilla Museum","offers":[{"title":"2xLP on Graphite Colored Vinyl + Digital (Download in AIFF\/MP3\/WAV)","offer_id":53997259129142,"sku":"JNR531_LP-C1","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Triptych Box Set + Digital (Three 2xLPs \"Grand Opening and Closing\", \"Of Natural History\", \"In Glorious Times\" plus booklets and signed poster in tri-fold wooden box w\/ etched and die-cut art. Hand-numbered out of 777. Instant download in AIFF\/MP3\/WAV)","offer_id":53997338132790,"sku":"JNR530_Triptych_Box_Set_GOAC","price":270.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital (Download in AIFF\/MP3\/WAV)","offer_id":53997259161910,"sku":"JNR531_Digital","price":9.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0844\/5451\/files\/JNR531CoverArtFinal.jpg?v=1778088877"},{"product_id":"of-natural-history","title":"Of Natural History","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the years which allowed or forced the creation of the Museum’s 2nd album (2002-04), both the band and its host country had “matured” into their differing expressions of a “War on Terror.” With smoking ruin in the rear-view mirror, the big green bus turned to the long road, gathering strength from the places between “places,” the vast stretches (coming from the West) of tree and stone and moving water that separate the cities. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo these far-flung cities they brought a revival meeting, exhorting the curious throng to “open their hearts” to a “lord of light” who steps from the shadows at the hinge into the next song to reveal itself as the Donkey-Headed Adversary of Humanity, opening the discussion. This welcoming pair of hymns also opens the album and catalyzes “the discussion” which follows as a debate between the Italian Futurists (‘Phthisis’), who in 1909 championed both the speed of the gleaming machine (to be “driven through the museums”) and the “hygiene of war,” and the Unabomber (‘Freedom Club’), whose anti-tech terrorism was carried out from a remote Montana hermitage to promote his manifesto, which declared that “the human race with technology is like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine.” The hygiene of war returns in ‘Gunday’s Child’ and the hungry machine of capital in ‘The Creature.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRespite from this one battle after another is offered by the album’s places between places, the peaceful ambience of field recordings made on the road by tour soundperson Olivia Oyama and Carla: crickets, cicadas, birds, frogs, highways, and the comical mutterings of more and less dangerous humans who had wandered onto the bus, in Toledo (“You know [the club owner]? Fuck him if he don’t wanna get high.”), South Carolina (“I’d rather keep my knife than have him run off with it in his back.”), and Florida’s Okeefenokee Swamp (barely audible over the amphibian din - “We got quiet time here after 10 o’clock… They’re just prayin’ for rain.”)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last side of ‘Natural History’ eases into one of the bands most gradual songs - ‘Babydoctor’ - an outpouring of impossible gratitude and solar epiphany, experienced (and mostly written) during a single day of encounters - with Jalal Namjool, a former baby doctor of greatly reduced vocabulary, 3 madmen, and the dentist’s drill. And of course, in any museum of significant historical scope, the last word must belong to that most tenacious of elders - the Cockroach, here derided as a “loathsome crawling thing” by the deluded singer with his spray, but we all know who gets the last laugh and who can truly proclaim, “Your problems are not mine.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs with the first album, there was a changing of the drum-guard in the 11th hour, with the fateful arrival of Matthais Bossi. The artful grace of Frank Grau’s departure is there in his album liner-photo - wearing the donkey head. For a relentless touring season of ’03 the whole band processed to the stage wearing various animal-head masks for the opening hymn, but only Frank wore his for the entire show, enduring great hardship. After the last show he announced his stepping down (naturally to pursue a career in professional sports-gambling and working at the Haight’s anarchist bookshop), but noted that the transition would be smoothed by the fact that the audience hadn’t actually seen his face all year. Just who is that donkey-headed adversary of humanity anyway? \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMatthais, on the other hand, had first stepped onto the bus as the drummer of Skeleton Key, a NY band sharing part of the tour with SGM. They suffered a non-fatal crash, totaling their van, and they with their salvaged gear were picked up, stitches and all, at the Chiriaco Summit rest area in the California desert, and finished the journey to the east on the big green bus. If the rest wasn’t history then, it is now. Matthias entered into the verbal spirit of things with aplomb, and helped to compose a single of sorts for the record - ‘Phthisis,’ which alone was produced at an incredible recording-compound in the Hollywood hills by Scott Humphrey, adding overdubs on a guitar owned by Motley Crue. The wild terraces of lush overgrowth which rose steeply behind the walled compound offered a perfect counterpoint to the seething city below, and an ideal place between places for the slow and dizzying contemplation of natural history. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sleepytime Gorilla Museum","offers":[{"title":"2xLP on Lavender Colored Vinyl (Includes download in AIFF\/MP3\/WAV)","offer_id":53997299171638,"sku":"JNR532_LP-C1","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Triptych Box Set + Digital (Three 2xLPs \"Grand Opening and Closing\", \"Of Natural History\", \"In Glorious Times\" plus booklets and signed poster in tri-fold wooden box w\/ etched and die-cut art. Hand-numbered out of 777. 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This confusion was first brought to the concert hall, to the microphone, opening the show with uncertain hesitation, apologies, and the comaraderie of shared fear. This invocation of “The Companions” also opens the album, veering wildly from paranoia to invulnerability, as in the answering-machine messages from Idiot Flesh light and puppet-master Brad Caswell: “I’m too strong now. I can’t lose. I try, but I’m too strong. I stole everything from you. I even stole your disaster.” The 3rd part of this triptych of a song introduces the transfiguring chain of substitutions, whereby the “recuerdo guarda…su aliento” : the memory guards the breath. “Behold the breath of the dragon.” \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInitially this song was to become a video, but its 10-minutes defied shortening, so director Adam Feinstein was sent a demo of the yet-unfinished “Helpless Corpses Enactment,” which he took to immediately, despite (or perhaps because of) “never having listened to metal.” In fact, the band had never done anything quite as thoroughly metal, with all pitchless growl-vocals over death-metal riffs and black-metal cascades, but with Carla’s actual violin ensuring a novel instrumentation. It has already been confessed that the bulk of the lyrics were set to rhythm on a crowded BART train, reading and whispering (chucklingly) from “Finnegans Wake” by James Joyce, a fact not-admissible when the album was first released. It has finally entered the public domain, but at its first New York performance, copies of the lyrics were distributed with the invitation to sing along. Immediately after the set, backstage, Carla’s father, Tycho Kihlstedt, alerted the band to the real dangers of lawsuit at the hands of Joyce’s grandnephew, which he’d seen in action as a teacher. A “Stop the presses!” went out that night, and a diverting blurb was substituted. Ah, the dangers of book-metal. (But the video is a sumptuous masterpiece, the work of many hands, and it has brought the museum to the attention of those who like to see snails on food on TV.) \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe “Puppet Show” started as just that - a nightly small “puppet show” written fresh each day by Matthias, often using hand-puppets made by Nils’ mother Mickie, and introducing the song. Dan’s “Formicary” is dedicated to his parents, whose legacy as eco-warriors in northern CA can be traced in his songs. Carla’s “Angle of Repose” echoes the legacy of her descent from Hungarian fiddle-players who crossed borders (and live, rocked the crowd at the Museum’s first show in Hungary in 2025. The buried become stories, which, planted, come up singing, which buried…and so on until the chain arrives at “persistently plastic things,” which may be the end of the line, settling into a final heap at the titular “angle.” \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Ossuary” introduces a new band-member and a 5th composer: Michael Mellender, whose seemingly borderless range of instruments and intricate pieces continue to drive the band forward today, also adding another heavy voice. “Suffer the lathe.” Michael initially replaced Moe! on percussion. At the time - ’05’ - he was living at The Nursery, sharing a wall with the band’s rehearsal room, so naturally he stepped in and played everything perfectly the first time. His instruments and playing of Dan’s homemade soon expanded and have never stopped. His instrumental - “The Widening Eye” - closes the record and features Carla on the percussion guitar. A video for “Eye” was also made, by Ri Crawford (whose stop-motion animation is increasingly famous in the films of fellow-Oaklander -Boots Riley). \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The Salt Crown” is the centerpiece of the transfiguration theme, in which stone uses “our watery mouths” to call itself by a new name, and “our watery eyes” to watch itself standing. At the end of 2005, the salt crown was put on by Per Frykdahl, band artist and Nils’ brother, whose long dance with mental illness and its drugs (and heroin and its legal substitute) finally came to a peaceful end. His drawings and “beat poetry” cover the album, and his hilarious answering-machine messages appear between the songs, accusing himself of being “corrupt.. and also legless.” \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The Only Dance” grows out of Matthias’ harmonically rich piano-writing and a poem by Wallace Stevens, perhaps an even less likely source for rock music than Joyce. “The Greenless Wreath” is a love song in the transfiguration theme, written on a rare solitary tour-stroll up Mt. Royal in Montreal, in which winter arrived with a breath. Carla’s keyed-fiddle, a Swedish nyckelharpa opens the stately formality of the folk-dance, in which one can “hold exhaustion close” and “fall in love with ghosts.” Don’t we all, sooner or later?  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn glorious times?  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sleepytime Gorilla Museum","offers":[{"title":"2xLP on Citrus Colored Vinyl (Includes download in AIFF\/MP3\/WAV)","offer_id":53997348520246,"sku":"JNR533_LP-C1","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Triptych Box Set + Digital (Three 2xLPs \"Grand Opening and Closing\", \"Of Natural History\", \"In Glorious Times\" plus booklets and signed poster in tri-fold wooden box w\/ etched and die-cut art. Hand-numbered out of 777. 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