Best Fit meets Gayngs

Whether you’re here for Justin Vernon’s appearance (as long as you have two ears and a heart, there’s no shame in admitting it) or Rhymesayers/Doomtree emcee P.O.S. who – and I don’t want to spoil things for you here – is not the collaborator who raps on this album… or the members of Megafaun or The Rosebuds or perhaps just a curiosity as to how an album performed entirely at 69 BPM with the sleaziest saxophone this side of George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’ could possibly be one of the freshest-sounding releases of 2010 so far, I can guarantee you will be surprised.

Relayted, which took one year from the band’s conception to the finished record, started as a collaboration between producer Ryan Olson and Solid Gold’s Zak Coulter/Adam Hurlburt. “We worked out rough maps of about 13 songs over the course of a few months. Then I called Mike Lewis and said ‘Get your hair in a ponytail and get over here!” and he came and recorded all of the sax parts over the skeletons of the songs we had,” says Olson. After Justin Vernon heard the tracks, he volunteered his studio for the day and, 28 hours of tracking later – alongside Megafaun and Ivan Rosebud – the record was starting to take shape. The rest of the musicians were tracked between May and December 2009, in Minneapolis, Wisconsin, and some in North Carolina. “We’re all connected through the Minneapolis and Eau Claire music scene, friends who’ve never been able to play all together.”

With so many players in the mix, how does the final result compare to their initial vision? Zak Coulter explains, “Once we decided we were actually going to produce an “album”, what I envisioned came pretty close to what was made, in some parts. In others, it became a whole new ballgame, or what we know as a “world”. Ryan has a great ability to hone in on a certain sound, and after the core group of players was determined, the influx of styles and inspirations mellowed, and we rode the crater’s edge into Gayngs.”

If you have a serious aversion to autotune, even in tasteful doses (the word ‘tasteful’ being used in a purely subjective sense), or think you might find it difficult to digest Justin Vernon’s monologue on the final track (in which he uses the phrase “I promise” no less than twice) perhaps this record is not for you. Ivan Rosebud puts it best when he explains bassist Brad Cook’s inspiration for the glacial bassline on ‘Faded High’. “We just got back from running games on the Halifax courts in Raleigh, NC when he got the call to record the bass for ‘Faded High’. When the line “I want your body on me” came through the speakers, I pushed the preamps and Brad said he was gonna lay a bassline as smooth and funky as the LA Laker great James Worthy’s one-handed spin move to the basket. I think he captured it all in that one take.”

The fact that Ryan Olson claims that “maternity wards” are the most likely ‘social group’ to gain from this record suggests that he is being slightly less than sincere when he describes what the future holds for this collaboration (“GAYNGS is omnipresent, sort of speak, and is headed decisively into a 55 BPM direction.”) We can only hope they will choose a suitably ambitious ’70s pop hit to take their inspiration from next time (if, indeed, there is a next time) because, as Olson points out, when you compare Relayted to what you think it’s going to sound like, it is “freakishly spot on”. This is one of those rare times where someone actually manages to pull off something similar to the experience of D’Angelo’s ‘Voodoo’. Unapologetically sexy music where initial aesthetic satisfaction then morphs into an entirely physical surrender. You are definitely going to want that cigarette.