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Species Being is a progressive-rock outfit formed in San Francisco by drummer
Frank Grau.
Yonilicious (Grauspace, 1998) is a work in 11 movements. Each movement
is a post-modern meditation on one or more musical genres
(be bop, latin, fusion, punk-rock, free-jazz, techno, klezmer, ambient,
metal...) which, in the process, get completely mutated through an adventurous
sonic odyssey.
Horn fanfares, keyboard noises and apocalyptic drumming propel
Pt I and Pt IV.
Pt IX's swinging bolero plunges into a gypsy dance whose theme is
repeated and variated in a rapid-fire sequence by flute, clarinet, mandolin
and kazoo...
Tempo shifts, odd meters and orchestral metamorphoses are in the best
progressive tradition of the 1970's.
Pt X's extended bebop ballad
(with "three instruments playing different meter combinations in syncopation"),
Pt VI's supersonic klezmer minimasm and
Pt VII's tribal jazz-rock
add to the fascination of a music that never stops triggering the brain towards
new musical horizons.
Certainly, of the most challenging progressive-rock recordings of the 1990's.
Frank Grau created the suite by laying down a 40 minute drum track and then
inviting guest musicians to perform whatever instrument on it.
The five untitled tracks of
Orgone Therapy (Chaosophy, 2000) were entirely improvised in the studio.
Eli Good's harp-like strumming kicks off Track 1, then mutates into
Sonic Youth-style metallic repetition while Kenseth Thibideau's booming bass
lays a carpet over the frantic drumming.
The 13-minute Track 3 is the closest to a vibrant jazz-rock jam.
While the music seems to be free-form, it lays on powerful principles
of geometry. Their jamming is
like a flow of hot fluid traversing the beehive of a crystal.
The 17-minute Track 5 slowly drifts towards a state of trance, while in
the process harking back to the
most cerebral suites by King Crimson and Soft Machine (and even the Who's
We Won't Get Fooled Again).
The eeriest atmosphere is created in Track 2, thanks to
the psychedelic dissonance of guitar and bass and to the sparkling texture of
Jai Young Kim's keyboards.
Even harsher dissonances stain Track 4's futuristic soundscape, that
could be their most adventurous piece ever.
The only problem for this ensemble is that it has reached a point of sublime
harmony that cannot be easily improved.
Adding more instruments and aiming for a symphonic dimension could lead to
even more seductive results.
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Species Being drummer Frank Grau also plays in Sleepytime Gorilla Museum with
vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Nils Frykdahl
and bassist Dan Rathbun of Idiot Flesh,
violinist/vocalist Carla Kihlstedt of Tin Hat Trio,
and found-object percussionist Moe Staiano.
The Idiot Flesh were a Dada-inspired art-rock cabaret act and a colorful
commune of dancers, prancers and noisemakers.
Their shows, performed in outrageous customes, would mix puppets, psychedelic
lights, pyrotechnics, visuals and theatre.
They dissolved in 1998,
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (that declare an influence from the apocryphal studies
of a philosopher/mathematician of the 19th century, John Kane) continue
Idiot Flesh's mission.
Rathbun's homemade instruments and his visceral playing dominate the mutating
pieces of their debut
album, Grand Opening And Closing (Seeland, 2001 - The End, 2007).
Opening track Sleep Is Wrong is emblematic of their art-collage of
Art Bears' convoluted prog-rock jamming, operatic/cabaret vocals,
loud industrial/grindcore guitar riffs and rhythmic humour.
Faithful to Idiot Flesh's unpredictability, the loud and ferocious
1997 straddles the line between grindcore and funk-metal.
Contradictions coexist in the nine-minute psychodrama
Powerless, where found objects duet with
a animal Nine Inch Nail-ish rant,
and shrill vocals punctuate the hard-rock impetus.
Rathbun's Stain is a post-rock feast of convoluted tempos.
The sprawling Sleepytime (for multiple dulcimers and vocals)
musical radio play, the male and female voice conversing
over a dense tapestry of tinkling percussions, before turning into a
soaring middle-eastern dance with apocalyptic overtones.
But the band has a second life as a quasi-classical ensemble.
The instrumental Ambugaton is a delicate concerto of string instruments,
one of the most gentle and sprightly of the album, the melody sounding like
one of Zappa's orchestral scores.
Kihlstedt's Ablutions is a lied set to dissonant music with a backdrop
of Japanese folk music and free noise.
And Sunflower is zen chamber music for percussion instruments.
There are enough ideas in this album to fill nine albums, one per track.
Of Natural History (Web of Mimicry, 2005) did the same things but in
much less spontaneous way.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum added a melodramatic emphasis worthy of
In The Nursery to
In Glorious Times (2007), while the musicianship reached jarring,
convoluted peaks reminiscent of
King Crimson.
The mini-opera The Companions plays tragic vocals, distorted carillons,
Spanish trumpets and a martial pace against each other.
Puppet Show flirts with both Carl Orff's Carmina Burana and
Henry Cow-esque progressive rock.
The Only Dance does the same with
Kurt Weill's expressionist cabaret and
Art Bears-esque lieder.
Formicary is a
ballad with atonal guitar, syncopated rhythm and countless tempo/mood shifts.
On the other hand, Helpless Corpses Enactment and Ossuary
borrow the growl and the epileptic rhythm from death-metal.
The eight-minute Carla Kihlstedt personal show (and album stand-out)
Angle of Repose
sets quirky female vocals a` la Bjork on fire
in a devilish crescendo with gypsy violin.
Another highlight is the seven-minute The Greenless Wreath, an
ethereal prayer-like shaped by sustained wails and wavering instruments.
The problem is that often the band does not seem to know what to do with the
brilliant ideas they put forth. A good (bad) example is the
nine-minute The Salt Crown.
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