Here’s a look at some of Tuesday’s releases, including Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, that have received attention in our confines this week.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
In Glorious Times (The End)
Release: 5/29/07
(This review, which can be read here in its entirety, will be printed in ALARM’s summer issue.)
Bay-area avant rockers Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, whose theatrical mixture of melodies, progressive rock, and metal gives them few contemporaries, have done more than rehash their wildly original style on In Glorious Times, their third full-length album. “Puppet Show” conjures images of a totalitarian figure rallying troops with a jarring, Broadway-meets-doom-metal backdrop; a pseudo-choir backs guitarist/vocalist Nils Frykdahl on “The Salt Crown.” “Formicary” presents a stellar low-end groove and alternating squeals from the guitar. If you’re unfamiliar with the neck-breaking work of the Museum, consider this as good a place to start as any.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum: “Helpless Corpses Enactment” (video)
Irepress
Samus Octology (Translation Loss)
Release: 5/29/07
This instrumental outfit combines melodic, mathy moments of guitar-driven rock in the vein of Don Caballero and Dysrhythmia with crushing heaviness, occasional chugging, and epic droning reminiscent of Red Sparrows or old-school Isis. Samus Octology is an effort that satisfies beasts both savage and refined.
Ataxia
AW II (Record Collection)
Release: 5/29/07
Though the second album from John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Joe Lally (Fugazi), and Josh Klinghoffer (Bicycle Thief) has finally seen the light of day, it was recorded during the same two-week time period that led to Automatic Writing (2004). AW II features similar long-form experimentalism that shifts guitars, vocals, and drums over steady basslines.
Les Claypool
Fancy DVD (Prawn Song)
Release: 5/29/07
Accomplished bassist and former Primus front man Les Claypool enlisted saxophonist Skerik (Critters Buggin’, Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet), vibraphonist Mike Dillon (Critters Buggin’, Garage a Trois), and multi-instrumentalist Gabby La La for his 2006 release, Of Whales and Woe. Fancy is a concert DVD of his summer tour in support of said album and features Cake drummer Paolo Baldi in addition to the others. The result is a tightly wound package of grooves over which the players throw down twisted solos.