Species Being and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

Species Being was 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.

Species Being's 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. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (that declare an influence from the apocryphal studies of a philosopher/mathematician of the 19th century, John Kane) basically continued Idiot Flesh's mission.
Rathbun's home-made 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 Nails-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.

The Book Of Knots were formed by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's drummer Matthias Bossi, Joel Hamilton, Tin Hat Trio's violinist Carla Kihlstedt, and Pere Ubu's bassist Tony Maimone. They debuted with The Book of Knots (Arclight, 2007) a historical concept album about fishermen in the 19th century.
Traineater (Anti, 2007) contains 14 exercises in creating spasmodic atmospheres. View From The Watertower is a slow chaotic six-minute dirge with delirious vocals and Captain Beefheart-ian atonal sub-blues jamming. Red Apple Boy is a twisted lullaby a` la David Thomas with demented twang and neoclassical strings. The pre-gospel collective chant Pray sounds like it's being played on kitchen tools by marching townfolks. The distorted operatic vocals and instruments, the skipping beats and the detached sample of Hands Of Production evoke the satiric operettas of early Residents. On the other hand, Traineater is a quiet meditation for female folksinger, and the tense Salina is how Alanis Morissette would sound in a mental asylum. They quickly run out of ideas and start mumbling over trivial jam-oriented music, but what works is truly grandiose in its un-grandiose scope, including the funny musique concrete of Walker Percy Evans High School that closes the proceedings. Cameos include Zeena Parkins, Doug Henderson, Carla Bozlulich, David Thomas, Jon Langford, Mike Watt.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's multi-instrumentalist Nils Frykdahl is also active in Faun Fables.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's drummer Moe Staiano released solo albums for found percussion such as The Non-Study Of First Impressions (Dephine Knormal Musik, 1997) and The Lateness Of Yearly Presentations (Amanita, 2001). He also formed his Moe!kestra that debuted with An Inescapable Siren Within Earshot Distance Therein And Other Whereabouts - Two Compositions For Large Orchestras (Amanita, 2006), containing Piece No. 7 (2003), followed by Two Forms Of Multitudes - Conducted Improvisations (Dephine Knormal Musik, 2005) and The Absolute Tradition Of No Traditions (PsychForm, 2007).

The Book of Knots released a third album, Garden of Fainting Stars (Ipecac, 2011).