Lending their voices to the album was a diverse group of young Toronto rappers and singers that includes Chief Awuah , Your Hunni , AARYS , Ro Joaquim , Kiki Rowe , and Dope Fa $ e .
In crafting the songs , one of the tough considerations for Wild and the other producers was how much primacy to give the Gould samples .
“ That was a fun struggle ,” Wild says with a little sarcasm . “ At first , it was all about , ‘ let ’ s try to preserve as much Glenn Gould as possible – let ’ s keep them in the forefront .’ The early Uninvited Guests stuff really resembled Massive Attack or Aphex Twin or more instrumental electronic kind of stuff . The thing was , though , that the classical people still hated it and regular people didn ’ t quite get it . So , I was in this weird land .”
A turning point came one day while he and rapper Chief Awuah were eating lunch . “ We also had the same day job working in a woodshop and in the office during our lunch breaks , I would pull up my laptop and work on beats and stuff . Like as a joke I turned a Glenn Gould sample into a trap song and his face lit up ,” Wild remembers . “ He was like , ‘ What ’ s that ?! You haven ’ t shown me that yet ? I want on that !’”
When Wild told him it was a Glenn Gould sample , Chief Awuah didn ’ t believe it . He told Wild , “ Why don ’ t you just make this stuff with Glenn Gould ?” That ’ s when , the producer says , he realized what kind of album they really needed to make .
“ I knew we were already toeing the line with just making it electronic . But now going rap with it ? Like , I knew there was no way anybody was going to allow that . But when I saw his reaction , I was like , ‘ Well , what ’ s the point of this ? Am I doing this so that I can appease a bunch of [ Gould fans ], or am I doing this to actually bring him to a younger generation of listeners ?’” he says . “ Slowly it started morphing towards me just treating the samples like I would treat any other sample . So , not as if Glenn Gould has to be in the forefront . It ’ s just I have this piano sample and let ’ s see how it serves the song .”
The result is that on some tracks , there ’ s just a four-bar loop of Gould ’ s music that is one of several musical elements in the song . “ On the more intricate Gould parts , as a producer , we kind of had to just sit back , have very minimal instrumentation in the back , and let Gould take over .”
Like Wild himself when this journey began , many of the vocalists on the album didn ’ t understand Gould ’ s importance when they agreed to lend their verses to the project . For the producer , he thinks that was a good thing , if only for one funny reason : “ I don ’ t know if everybody would have approached it the same way had they realized . I mean , I don ’ t think people would have been as vulgar on the record , to be honest with you .”
It did make for a pretty uncomfortable listening session with between Wild and Pick and representatives from Primary Wave and Sony before the album went to mastering .
“ We were on a Zoom call , which was weird , listening to the whole record together ,” Wild remembers . “ It was myself and Gabe and when the real vulgar parts were coming up , we were just kind of giggling at each other ; bobbing
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our heads and going , like , ‘ Well , this is where they tell us we ’ re crazy because there ’ s no way they ’ re going to let this go .’”
Somewhat incredibly , Wild says they never received any pushback from Primary Wave , Sony Masterworks , or the Glenn Gould Estate . Who they have received blowback from , though , are classical music fans . To promote the album , short behind-the-scenes videos were posted to the official Glenn Gould YouTube channel . The reaction there and on social media was not kind .
“ It ’ s weird . I ’ ve never been a part of something so polarizing ,” the producer says .
But what ’ s more important and gratifyingly to Wild is that people who actually knew and worked with Gould think he would have loved what they did . To paraphrase , Wild says a couple friends of Gould told him , “ He would actually love what you guys are doing . Who knows whether he would have actually liked the music or rap or any of that stuff , but the fact that you guys are in a basement on laptops and you just released a major label-distributed record for no money without knowing anything about classical music ? Yeah , he would have absolutely loved that part of it .”
Michael Raine is the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Musician .
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