Recent Minneapolis BTW Gayngs is essentially the project of producer Ryan Olson (above) with Zack Coulter and Adam Hurlburt of Solid Gold, but there are so many extra hands crammed into the hot tub each track it feels more like a community effort. When we posted Relayted opener “The Gaudy Side of Town” we mentioned it included the vocals and guitar of Justin Vernon. What we didn’t mention: You should also hear Michael Lewis’s sax, Megafaun members Brad Cook on slap bass and Joe Westerlund on drums, and a few others circulating around Coulter’s keyboards/beatbox and croon. The smooth, upbeat 7-minute “I want your body on me” jam “Faded High” includes an even bigger cast … along with airy vocal melodies and overlaps, soulful guitars, electronic blips and whirls, and a dust-kicking drum breakdown just before the backward key/guitar weeping finale.

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This summer, North Carolina BTW (and Gayngs-related triathlon weepers) Megafaun are following last year’s Gather, Form & Fly with a 36-minute mini-album Heretofore. It reportedly includes a 13-minute instrumental, so that leave 23 minutes of singing songs. Our first taste, “Volunteers,” is a laid-back down-home dose of banjo and sunshine that should go over well with fans of Drive-By Truckers and lazy afternoons. 

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Minneapolis producer Ryan Olson and Zack Coulter and Adam Hurlburt of Tanlines pals Solid Gold are at the center of Gayngs, but a couple dozen other folks orbit the trio on the debut album Relayted. Olson started the project in his Minnesota bedroom, but stepped outside and into Wisconsin’s April Base studio where he threaded North Carolina BTW Megafaun, the Rosebuds’ Ivan Howard, Justin Vernon (who appears on 9 of the 11 tracks), and Bon Iver’s Mike Noyce into the mix. Back in Minneapolis, he continued layering with rapper P.O.S., jazz saxophonist Michael Lewis (currently in Andrew Bird’s band), members of Lookbook, slide guitarist Shön Troth (also of Solid Gold), and various other hands, voices, and devices. What you might not expect is the sharply produced collection’s chilly, rich, soft-rock and R&B, a sound that’s earned more than one Bone Thugs reference. Gayngs list only 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love” in their MySpace “Sounds Like” field and cover 10cc spin-off Godley & Creme’s “Cry” on Relayted, but there are dozens of other echoes (from Primitive Radio Gods to Yeasayer to Kenny G) that surface and expand across these 55 minutes. Check out opener “The Gaudy Side of Town,” a song that swells to seven minutes on Relayted, but gets a trimming here. It’s OK to think about George Michael while listening to Zach Coulter’s croon. And note Justin Vernon’s background atmospherics (and guitar stylings).

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Fresh off of making waves by performing for the filmic undead, Justin Vernon continued his recent fascination with thespian mortality by holding his previously reported show at the Hollywood Cemetery, where all the actors are buried. Cemetery gates opened at the stroke of midnight (obviously). Coffee and donuts were served. Photographer Andrew Youssef arrived shortly after 2AM, joining roughly 2,000 people for the event which kicked off with a screening of Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket before Buddhist monks performed a ritual blessing to cleanse the air for Bon Iver’s 6AM set. The Wisconsinite harmonized into the dawn with a set that covered pretty much “all the songs they known,” which for a man with just an LP and EP to his stage name isn’t that many songs, but certainly enough to cement some goosepimply cemetery memories. (There was a feel-good reunion, too, Justin welcoming his old DeYarmond Edison bandmates in Megafaun out for a tune.) Watch as the sky grows lighter during this “Babys”:

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Megafaun’s Bury The Square was an invigorating mix of folk harmonies, spaced-out explorations, and noisy/spliced experimentation. Tellingly, the Raleigh-via-Eau Claire trio’s comfortable playing (or collaborating) with Akron/Family, the Rosebuds, and/or Arnold Dreyblatt: Their unique, refined cut-and-pasting earned them a BTW stamp and had us curious enough to look into their day jobs. Megafaun’s second album Gather, Form & Fly finds brothers Brad and Phil Cook and Joe Westerlund in a similarly natural state of unbounded eclecticism. Drones follow pristine ballads. Plucky bar hops are stormed by free noise howls. Water drips over hand drum circles. Pastorals implode. And, of course, there are those three-part Crosby, Stills and Nash harmonies. Take a listen to the dusky “Kaufman’s Ballad,” which goes out to Gram Parsons’ manager, Phil, who stole Parsons’ post-funeral body and cremated it in Joshua Tree desert with gasoline, per Parsons’ request. Something very comforting about that.

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Raleigh-via-Eau Clair BTW Megafaun debuted impressively earlier this year with Bury The Square. The trio nip-and-tuck experimental tendencies (tape splicing, white noise colliding with banjo, junkyard-laced spring reverb, screeching feedback at the tail end of a quiet back porch lament) and spacey explorations (see the second half of “Find Your Mark”) into epic barber-shop Americana. It makes perfect sense they’ve toured and collaborated with Akron/Family (check out those three-part harmonies) as much as it makes sense that they’re about to play some shows with the legendary German minimalist composer Arnold Dreyblatt (note the intro transmissions of “Tired And Troubled” before the hoedown starts). Bury came out in February on Table Of The Elements’s Radium imprint. The guys recently signed to Portland’s Hometapes. Expect the new album in Spring 2009.

Megafaun are here today because they also hold down day jobs. Drummer Joe Westerlund works for the coffee roaster Larry’s Beans where he packages beans and does odd jobs. Banjo player Phil Cook works for Center for Inquiry Based learning, a non-profit out of Duke University, where he “assembles hands-on science kits for elementary schools.” He’s used some of these supplies as piano preparations and as instruments for the band’s live shows/recordings. Phil’s brother Brad Cook manages an independent record store, Schoolkids Records. Additionally, he co-owns Burlytime Records with Pitchfork’s Grayson Currin and put out QYDJ alumni Bowerbirds‘ debut, etc. That said, I didn’t bother asking about the label and instead went full-on into a job the three guys do together: Each year they temp for the Ironman of North America triathlon. I’m not kidding.

After our discussion about the state of record stores, coffee, science projects, and people suffering from organ failure during triathlons, take a listen to non-album track “Beloved Binge.”

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You don’t need us to tell you that if you want to see R.E.M. tonight you should have started lining up at Stubb’s two days ago. Also you know how big these SXSW crowds are getting every year. The best bet for the sake of your legs — and for the sake of not standing in line all night — is to pick your showcase wisely. Besides, there are too many stacked bills to even worry about hopping around all night. Rather than sprain your fingers scrolling through tonight’s master list, we’ve made you a list of eight different places offering multiple-set enjoyment. And as with each of our SXSW previews, we laced the list with MP3s to help you make up your mind, should you be one of those independent thinker types.

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On their debut Bury The Square, Raleigh-via-Eau Clair trio Megafaun neatly splice together different strands of sounds, whether it’s tape manipulated hoedowns (“Tired And Troubled”) mournful, slow-blooming banjo-and-white-noise-laced epics (“Where We Belong”), or the rural barbershop doo wop of “Find Your Mark.” Focusing on a wide palette of instrumentation, but always coming back to their soaring three-part harmonies, it’s easy to see why Akron/Family contacted them out of the blue and asked them to support them on a six-week tour: Megafaun opens, then joins Akron plus excellent sound manipulator Greg Davis on-stage as a supergroup of sorts. When they’re on their own as Megafaun, the group consists of brother Brad and Phil Cook, along with Joe Westerlund. All three played in DeYarmond Edison with Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), and Brad co-owns Burlytime Records (with Pitchfork scribe Grayson Currin), the label that put out Bowerbirds and Horseback last year. Enough talking points? Take a listen to “Find Your Mark” and “Lazy Suicide,” a countrified junk shop ramble, after the jump.

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