The songs are all based around a single beats-per-minute ratio and feature two of the principal players from the earlier project. However, don't call Taggart & Rosewood — the new synth-throb duo with Zach Coulter and Ryan Olson — Gayngs Lite.
"I think it's very different," said Olson, alluding to the ambitious visual presentation promised for Friday's release party at the Triple Rock. "People will see how different it is at the show."
Named after the cop duo that teams up with Eddie Murphy in "Beverly Hills Cop," Taggart & Rosewood started as a home-recording project while the twosome was rooming together in the aftermath of Gayngs, the 2010 all-star band that Olson masterminded with Solid Gold leader Coulter. It evolved a year later when Olson went to the Austin, Texas, studio of Spoon drummer Jim Eno to produce the first Poliça album. He recruited Eno to drum over T&R's electronic beats.
Now that it's finally coming to light, the duo is taking on another new shape in the form of the live show. The guys didn't want to reveal too much, but Olson promised, "It's going to be one of a kind."
"The visual aspect is really half of what this is all about," said Coulter, who sports long, fake, vampire-like fingernails in all of the band's visual presentations so far, while both he and Olson are seen in weird face-net masks.
Their album, "The Killingest," boasts creepy sci-fi overtones set to ethereal waves of slowly rippling synth and plodding beats. All of its 11 tracks are set to the same tempo, 55 beats per minute, a noticeable slowdown from the Gayngs record's 69 bpm — but in a lot of ways more invigorating to create, the musicians both said.
"The limitations kind of force you to tap into different tones," Olson explained. Said Coulter, "Without sounding too arty about it, it's sort of like being told to paint with only one color."
Both guys admit T&R is just a side project that may live on, but only sporadically. Olson is in the thick of working on Poliça's third album and planning for his buddy Justin Vernon's Eaux Claires Music Festival. Coulter has been working on projects with Har Mar Superstar and Cecil Otter but also plans to start working on new Solid Gold tunes around bassist Adam Hurlburt's current duties moonlighting in Aero Flynn, whose record (co-produced by Vernon) dropped Tuesday.
![Cloud Cult's Sarah Elhardt-Perbix performs on the keyboard at the 89.3 The Current sponsored MN Music On-A-Stick Thursday, August 30 at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand. ] (SPECIAL TO THE STAR TRIBUNE/BRE McGEE) **Sarah Elhardt-Perbix (Cloud Cult keyboard)](https://arc.stimg.co/startribunemedia/O7LI2IUR23ZUYTEPBQF7TCQJVU.jpg?&w=1080)
