ProgRockMain

Interview: Mr. Nils Frykdahl Musician/Composer Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Faun Fables

Greetings Nils, thank you for allowing me to e-mail interview you.

When did you know that you wanted to be a musician?

I grew up playing classical flute, which I loved and took seriously, but it wasn’t until the all-consuming fever of playing idiotic rock

guitar with my friends at age 15 (while smoking someone’s dad’s shake), took hold that music shaped my identity. Even then it was essentially a basic teenage social activity. I’ve always kept something of that dedication to play music only because I wanted to and not turn it into a job that was necessary to pay the rent. For that I grew up painting houses with my dad and brother (Museum artist, Per Frykdahl), which I’ve enjoyed much more than playing "money gigs" in settings or for audiences that I don’t respect. Doing labor for money is a simple selling of skills and time, but doing art for money is full of precarious assumptions …If they are paying, shouldn’t they decide what we are playing to some extent i.e. Black Sabbath does "Paranoid" at every show for 30 years because..? I’m just glad that there have been some people interested in what we do as it changes.

Did you begin as an avant-garde band?

SGM was deliberately assembled from musicians that knew each other’s work for years and all shared an interest in making rock rooted in texture and composition. Idiot Flesh (including Dan and I) had been pushing in this direction in our final years, during which time we worked with Carla in Charming Hostess also. David Shamrock was a drummer whose compositions we’d long admired and Moe! was a blur we’d witnessed destroying TV’s and stages and wondered if that energy could be harnessed for good (or evil). So the Museum began as a writing project, not necessarily with the worldly activities of touring in mind. David moved away immediately after our west coast debut tour in ’99. He was in it for the writing and recording. Once the record was almost done we found Frank Grau, a drummer who also managed us and put us on the road. Now he also has quit the teetering drum stool and is officially our manager. Matthias Bossi has replaced him and is blossoming like a menacing jungle flower.

Who influenced you in teenage years? And now?

The usual for my Oakland neighborhood: Zeppelin, Sabbath, Maiden Priest, Slayer, Funkadelic, Black Flag- made me want to play guitar. Of course my movement onstage and my predilection for shiny pokey things betrays my metal roots, but certainly there has been a continuous onslaught of marvelous discoveries which have kept me excited about the potential of

music and life in particular. Leading me out of the metal ghetto were many musics. First, yes, was "progressive" rock: Crimson,

Gabriel/Genesis, Peter Hammill, Bowie, Floyd, Bauhaus, then the true mindblower for me- Art Bears and Fred Frith, integrating the density and harmonic concentration of the classical music I liked in my parents record collection growing up and which I eventually studied in school: Bartok, Stravinsky (I did an arrangement of the Rite of Spring for Acid Rain, my first band), Schonberg, Webern, Messiaen, Boulez Stockhausen, and Berio. "Winter Songs" by the Art Bears left me spellbound and baffled and its influence is just coming into focus in my own music now years later. The other greatest impact on my work is the minimalist

texture music of Swans (‘82-’97), who changed from violent to sweetly sad and back in fifteen years but always put power, texture and emotional impact first, with a minimum of composition, really. So these influences are opposites in some ways, but both have tapped for me the chilling power of art as transformational magic. Also important for me in this regard has been Butoh dance, a Japanese form emphasizing emptying out the body to make room for the Other- animals, elements, ancestors, the crippled, ancient and blind as a starting point. I owe a certain brain-damaged restraint at the microphone, as well as aspects of the make-up, teeth. and costume to years of working with a Butoh troupe, Ink Boat, on the west coast and in Europe, as have most of the Museum folks. Of course in this performance influence I must mention the tremendous impact of seeing The Residents live for the first time in ’87. The otherworldliness and unrelenting thoroughness of vision and consistency of presentation is possibly

unparalleled. Now, I’m having a metal and noise revival. The black metal scene of Norway has pushed the ambitions of the genre into extremes of long-form composition formerly reserved for prog, along with swirling density and of course blinding speed, as well as some imaginatively demonic vocal approaches, all quite different from our own Floridian death metal, which is fun but less conceptually ambitious. And, I’m having an early industrial revival. Throbbing Gristle pushed the envelope on noise and conceptual art disguised as a band, continuing with the cult, pre-rave Psychic TV. And of course, the German fathers of banging on scaps and springs, Einsturzende Neubauten, whose tattoo Moe! proudly wears and rightly so. The early "industrial" movement is in some

ways my era of awakening to music as a spiritual path and art as a revolutionary force. The interviews in ReSearch with Genesis P. Orridge (Gristle/PTV) and William Burroughs were as important as the music and a part of it. Michael Gira (Swans and now Angels of Light) has continued to be maliciously eloquent as a spokesman for a generation with the black nihilism of almost apolitical post-punk as its starting point. There’s amazing electronic music these days. The transcendent wall of sheer noise-blast that has long been Merbow, the hyper and complex Aphex Twin, the blown-out "digital Hardcore" of Atari Teenage Riot, and the

delightfully empty clicks and sine-tones of Ryoji Ikeda . And folk music from all over the world… and Robert Wyatt… and incredible

musicians we meet all over the country and world…it never stops…let it never stop.

What types of guitars do you play? Any customized?

Guitars made in Korea. My six-string is still my old first guitar- Aria Pro II. And the twelve-str. is a lovely ’97 Epiphone re-issue. Dan customizes my pickups and everything else in Sleepytime: the home-mades, percussion guitar, piano log, pedal-action-wiggler, the bus, the recordings….the man is undaunted by things of the material world.

How do you typical go through the process of composing?

Various ways. Often one of us will bring in some thing unfinished and the whole group will workshop it into a semi-final but always changeable form. We never close them into finishedness, even after they are recorded. Sometimes we will work from improvisations that generate material which gets shaped into songs. And sometimes one of us will have all the parts written out. But generally we like to have everyone’s idiosyncratic writing going into their part. That was part of assembling this particular group of people. New instruments will generate new songs and vice-versa.

The classic question. What would you listen to if you were stranded on a desert island (With a CD player and batteries), and you could have any ten albums, what would you choose?

Art Bears "Winter Songs" (or hell, the whole new box set, that should count as one)

Swans are Dead (final live tour-a summary)

Robert Wyatt "Rock Bottom"

Pierre Boulez "Pli Selon Pli" (texture heaven- metal versus wood)

Uz Jsme Doma "Rybi Tuk" (incredible new album of Czech prog opera punk produced by Dan, our favorite all-time touring partners)

Emperor "Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk" (the birth of symphonic black metal)

Lole y Manuel "El Origen de una Leyenda" (stark flamenco beauty)

Morton Feldman "for Samuel Beckett" (to stop time)

Einsturzende Neubauten "Drawings of O.T." (primal and lovely birth of songs from noise)

Faun Fables "Mother Twilight" (in case Dawn isn’t on the island)

For the uninitiated, please define Sleepytime Gorilla Museum for the internet audience.

Rock against Rock. Elaborate music arising from primitive sounds, theater giving way to possession.

Why the name Sleepytime Gorilla Museum?

In our previous group Idiot Flesh we were inspired by the "black math" and Dada-ist peasant philosophies of John Kane, and noticed that he was published by the "Sleepytime Gorilla Press". In further correspondence with the John Kane Society we learned more about their "Museum" (see liner notes to Grand Opening and Closing) and were tempted to change the name of our band then, but didn’t have the nerve to go with something so awkward… but years later….awkwardness be damned, it just feels good on the tongue, so what if its always wrong on the marquee. Those English-as-a-fourth-language-Futurists were on to something, I say, paving the way for a later generation.

When is new studio album going to be released and what is it all about?

It looks like fall now, what with the slow-down of finding a new drummer, finishing new Faun Fables and Tin Hat Trio albums, and now outfitting a new bus (actually older -‘62- but more powerful and greener). We just mixed a song,"Bring Back the Apocalypse"

(quite different from the Livealbumversion- fun), for the Web of Mimicry label sampler which will be distributed at the South by Southwest festival at the end of our tour in March. The new record will be perhaps more theatrical, more reflective of the live show, including a wider range of moods and tempos than the first, and some humor (albeit black).

I’m very excited to get back to work on it- this week’s mixdown of Bring Back was a blast- but the road calls…

Do you consider SGM a progressive band?

Yes, if that means that we take as our mission pushing ourselves and our inherited forms to the limits of our abilities/vision, and that that is a serious and worthwhile endeavor in this art-product saturated world. How can we be as necessary as possible? Certainly, I consider all the music I mentioned above to be progressive by that standard, even some who find themselves looking backwards, like many today within the genre of "Prog rock".

Does labeling a band help?

It helps to sort the mass of music/band info. Many groups actively embrace a particular scene or genre and would be proudly

labeled by it. We have been called prog, metal, art, goth, industrial, experimental…and its all fine. These may be confusing in some ways, but its probably clear then that we’re not country or punk or ska.

You called Nearfest a dizzy" day. How was the gig? Did you catch any of the other bands?

Yes, I called the Nearfest a dizzy day, partly because it was our largest audience to date, and almost entirely new, so we had a whole day and night of explaining to do. Also, we loaded in at 8 am and played at 11 am, so given my usual vampire schedule, I hadn’t really slept more than a few minutes. We soundchecked in that cavernous and empty room. The curtains closed. We dashed to the bus and threw on our costumes and make-up, rushed back to the stage, and the curtains opened, revealing not the few early morning stragglers that we suspected, but a basically full house of 1800 people, for whom we politely sang our Hymn. It was a Sunday morning, after all. Talking to all the interested prog fans was a delight, our first big prog audience, and it went on into the morning again, so another day of no sleep for me, and I ended up down at the creek behind the hall as the light of dawn crept in. An amazing day.

We arrived Saturday night part way into Magma’s set. We had been checking out their records and were excited to see them, so we were tearing up the road from Louisville KY. They were satisfyingly powerful and strange, rock/choral music from another planet. The other groups on Sunday I didn’t know, but I liked Anglegaard a lot, and Camel struck me as quite sincere in a classic way, lovely guitar soloing.

Do you still play flute?

Yes, I still play flute in my acoustic band, Faun Fables, often to accompany Dawn’s yodeling. It may make its way into a SGM song if it feels right. There is a little piccolo in SGM, such an extreme little sound, you know. I write and sing in Faun Fables in a more melodic and songlike way. Also, I work on music for the Butoh Dance group Ink Boat, from time to time, which can be cabaret-type songs or very abstract soundtracks.

What is the next step in the evolution of SGM as a recording group

and as a live act?

We have plans to do some recording in studios other than our bassist, Dan’s, Polymorph, where we have done all our projects

to date. We’re looking into offers in LA and New York to record while on tour. The live act is incorporating the input of Matthias Bossi, who is proving to be a delightful collaborator and player of various instruments, continuing the pitched percussion (xylorimba, glockenspiel), that Frank began, singing and writing as well.

11. What is your favorite book? Movie? Any hobbies or interests outside music?

That changes weekly ( last week it was the "Unabomber Manifesto" or Industrial Society and its Future by Ted Kaszinski or "FC"), but my favorite writer would have to be Samuel Beckett, who has influenced my work and humor since I became obsessed

with his books 15 years ago. His world functions as a mirror to this one because it is so reduced that it is only related in essential, primal, but very human qualities.

My favorite movie is Rosemary’s Baby by Polanski, perhaps, for sheer delight, or Santa Sangre by Alejandro Jodorowsky, but my favorite film-maker is Ingmar Bergman, for bold unabashed striving after the naked, starving soul. Too much, indeed, but that is what I need from art (and life).

Aside from pursuing various fields of interest in the world of books- mythology, ancient history, modern art, natural history, the occult, extremism, philosophy- I have developed a great love of trees and the ever-varying landscapes that we pass through

on tour. I have favorite rest stops all over the country, and the long drives across the emptiest parts of the nation ?Nevada. Utah, Wyoming- are always tour highlights for me. We also take advantage of days off to visit National Parks. Our last summer tour following Nearfest included the Okeefenokee Swamp, the Painted Desert, the Badlands, and Yellowstone. I worship nature and it imparts to me an unshakeable sense of rightness of place and essential beauty of life and death.

Do you work outside the music industry?

Yes, I still paint houses when breaks in touring allow it, and, unless the customer is a jerk, which I can usually see coming and avoid, I enjoy the different hat it allows me to wear.

At Nearfest you dedicated a song to "our doomed nation". Do you feel our country cannot repair itself?

Yes. We are the new Rome at its greatest extent of empire. Our rampant militarism, sacrificing the poorest Americans for the wealthiest, in fact, for the transnational corporate interests that determine American political moves, is a symptom of our more or less imminent decline. For any politician to get near the top, they have to have sold themselves to these interests so many times over as to make it impossible for real change to happen with anything short of a revolution, which won’t occur from within until large numbers of boys come back in body bags. Thus far the media has successfully underplayed the growing resistance to our interventionist

foreign policy from the right and the left, but it is clear to folks who travel continuously like ourselves. Certainly the land and its people will endure through changes in the economic system which is subsidized by the third world, but the government is living on credit and now rape and pillage. Actually for the last hundred years or so we (our govt. that we know so little about until years after the fact) have sponsored wars in the third world totaling at least 8 million dead. We can and will continue in this fashion for as long as we can, regardless of the goodwill of "the American people", but like all empires, we will fall.

Do you consider the band to be political?

I have personally tried to keep politics out of my work for years, feeling that it is always full of compromises and aspects of the world that interest me the least. Dan’s songs have always had an ecological emphasis, however; he’s from the country. And lately, the embarrassment and danger of being an American traveling abroad has forced a reckoning with our oil-mafia cabinet at the least. Politics has unfortunely come to all of us, though I continue to emphasize its mythic dimensions.

If you were king of America, list 5 things you would change

1. I would turn America’s influence against the World Trade Organization, which basically forces "modernization and development" on nations that don’t need or want it. The arabs who don’t want it are "terrorists".

2. Desubsidize the auto-industry and fund with that money a rebuilding of our national and inter-urban rail lines, the tearing up of which was paid for by the early auto and oil industries.

3. Demilitarize our foreign policy, which basically is stockpiling the last of the world’s oil (Arab roverb: My grandfather rode a camel. My father drove a car. I fly in a private jet. My grandson will ride a camel.) , and devote part

of that incredible $400 billion budget to energy research…hydrogen cell?

4. Support and expand the International Society for Ecology and Culture, which sponsors tours bringing leaders of "poor" nations feeling the pressure to "develop" to see the real horrors of the west and de-glamorize modernity. Conversely, the west can learn about what we have lost from these "primitive" peoples.

5. Educate, provide birth control for and encourage global population decline (for humans). We are an infestation with almost no natural enemies, or rather, we keep staying one step ahead of them. Of course, nature bats last, and we should never under estimate her ingenuity.

What does music mean to you?

Many things: a social, community touchstone of collective expression of a shared time and place; a flow of history through the body- a lineage; a very human interaction with non-human materials- metal, wood- and our learning from them; a spiritual path, a door into other worlds through which glimpses are shared through the evanescent medium of sound.

Will there be a video of a SGM live show?

A DVD of our last Oakland show is in the works. In fact it is largely done and we are looking for someone to put it out.

Is there anything you'd like to add or say to the prog community? To new musicians?

Keep your ears open to the unexpected present, the unpredictable future. To new musicians- when they say "Its all been done before", tell them they haven’t heard what you’re going to do next weekend.

Thanks Nils, hope to see you soon!