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Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

of the Last Human Being

AVNT-001    Release date: Feb 23, 2024   

$34.00 USD
$34.00 USD
Sale Sold out

After thirteen years of hibernation, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum has emerged from stasis to proudly announce the imminent release of their fourth studio album, "of the Last Human Being”. The Museum, comprised of multi-instrumentalists and rotating vocalists Nils Frykdahl, Carla Kihlstedt, Michael “Iago” Mellender, Matthias Bossi, and Dan Rathbun, plays an arsenal of instruments ranging from the somewhat standard (drums, electric guitars, bass, electric violin) to the rare (bass harmonica, nyckelharpa, marxophone) to the homemade (Slide-Piano Log, Electric Pancreas, Pedal-Action Wiggler). The group has consistently evaded easy categorization, garnering accolades from across the aisles of contemporary classical music, prog rock, industrial music, metal, avant-garde improv, and more. Their music, in turns bashing and bucolic, enveloping and unsettling, tends towards long-form epics interspersed with mysterious field recordings.  

“As this slow-rolling planetwide Anthropocene Extinction event deepens, Sleepytime’s work has only grown more resonant, more prescient,” offers Mer Yayanos, current symposiarch and secretary of the Museum’s long standing social math club, the John Kane Society. “What better time for them to Bring Back the Apocalypse than right now, with a new full-length record that integrates the past and the future?” 

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  • Tracklist

    1. Salamander in Two Worlds
    2. Fanfare for the Last Human Being
    3. El Evil
    4. Bells for Kith and Kin
    5. Silverfish
    6. S.P.Q.R.
    7. We Must Know More
    8. The Gift
    9. Hush, Hush
    10. Save It!
    11. Burn Into Light
    12. Old Grey Huron
    13. Rose-Colored Song

  • Credits

    Most of these recordings were started at Polymorph in Oakland, CA in 2010-11. Additional overdubs in the intervening years were done at Polymorph and in home studios across the land. S.P.Q.R. was entirely recorded and mixed at Polymorph in 2004 and previously released as a 7” on Dephine Knormal Musik. (Hi, Moe!) “Hush, Hush” and “El Evil” were recorded at Polymorph and home studios in 2023.

    All songs: Sleepy Time Gorilla Press Music, BMI, except Hush, Hush and Silverfish (Broca’s Fold, ASCAP) and S.P.Q.R. (Rough Trade Music)

    Mixed by Dan 2023 ~ Produced by SGM ~ Mastered by Todd Rittmann

    Art by Per “Ward C. Picnic” Frykdahl
    Design by Jenya Chernoff and Nils
    Logos and lettering by Nils
    Photos and film stills from the film “The Last Human Being: A Critical Assessment,” directed by Max Baloian, featuring Shinichi Iova Koga

    ~ Ministry of Revivification ~

    Meredith Yayanos – Special Ambassador, Ordained Symposiarch Of The John Kane Society
    Mallory McAvoy – Diplomatic Liaison, Bailiff Of The Guild Of Bards
    Erik Carter (an uncle) – Futurist Coordinator
    John Karr – Audial Conveyist And Evidence Hoarder
    Scott Crowley – Moving Picture Husbandry and Conservation
    Jenya Chernoff – Head Of Propaganda and Graphic Design
    Gregory Scharpen – Imagist, Disinformationist
    Nicholas Ohler – Patron Saint of Fucked-Up Music
    Karl Hofstetter – Locked Groove Stasis Enabler
    Robert S. Meitus – Disentanglementalist

    Boundless gratitude to our families, our friends, and our vast community of independent artists, musicians, and makers of all sorts. Thank you to Penelope Allman, Max Baloian, the Bossihlstedts, Steven Clark, Merlin Coleman, Sean Crawford, Dawn & the Faunettes, Thor Harris, Gooby Herms, the Kihlbossis, Shinichi Iova Koga & inkBoat, Claire Mack, Michael McCamish, Simon Miller, Lara Miranda, Dominique Persi, Nieves Rathbun & Jasper, Greg Scharpen, Janice & Gordie Shaw, Free Salamander Exhibit, Kitka, Rabbit Rabbit Radio, and Dr. Grordbort’s Infallible Aether Oscillators. Nick & Anya from AVANT NIGHT would like to thank the Joyful Noise Recordings team and Kramer & Valerie from Shimmy-Disc for their friendship, mentorship, and assistance with making this album a reality.

    Endless props to the one-thousand-one-hundred-and-twenty-two generous people who helped us “SAVE THE LAST HUMAN BEING!” on Kickstarter. Boundless gratitude to all who volunteered time and energy to those buck-wild LHB film shoots oh so many years ago. Bottomless cheer to each and every member of the John Kane Society whether living, dead, or liminal.

    Truly, it is all of you who have made this complex revivification possible. Rock against rock, and rejoice!

    AMBUGATON!