Girl Talk's unique mixes generate interest

Mixing samples of popular songs, Girl Talk is a figure of music oddity.

By Jordan Sargent

Published Oct. 24, 2008

On the second song on Girl Talk's second album, the pre-fame Unstoppable, he begins to loop the vocals from Khia's "My Neck, My Back (Lick It)" over the eponymous piano line from Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting."

It's one of Girl Talk's signature ploys, playing the lyrics of a supremely nasty rap song over the instrumental from a sweet and innocent pop song. If one was listening to this song after hearing his third, and breakthrough, album Night Ripper, the conclusion could be reached that Girl Talk, real name Gregg Gillis, has been releasing epic albums of pop papier-mâché since well before anyone knew his name.

But about 10 seconds later the song starts to splinter and disintegrate into metallic shards of clipped vocals and lacerated beat fragments.

Later in the song, vocals from a Busta Rhymes single emerge from the hailstorm, but otherwise, the song, and the album, is a messy exercise in experimentation, nothing like the often life-affirming blends Girl Talk has been releasing since 2006.

The evolution from avant-garde ho-hum to pop's Jackson Pollack is one Gillis can easily trace. It became apparent to him just as he was dropping Unstoppable that people at his shows were responding heavily to bits in his set where he would let recognizable samples play out against each other.

"The first time I played Europe, I was going to be playing at a more traditional-style dance venue over there," Gillis said. "So in preparation for that show I was like, 'Well, I'm going to put together one 45-minute set' which I had never done. And after that show I was like, 'Wow, I could maybe do an album like this where it just never stops.'"

That show, along with others Gillis played in 2004, helped push him toward the effervescent and seamless style of mixing he later perfected on Night Ripper and continued, with a fair amount of success, on this year's Feed the Animals.

Night Ripper really started becoming a popular force around the summer of 2006, when out of nowhere, it received a coveted Best New Music tag from online criticism beacon Pitchfork. From then on, Gillis has become one of the most divisive figures in indie music (where most of his audience lies), though he didn't expect any of it.

"I definitely wasn't planning on it going where it went at all," Gillis said. "I knew it was more accessible, and I hear albums all the time and I'm like, 'No one's doing anything like that, why isn't that huge?' But I had no idea what the potential of the audience reaction would be."

After a few months, and after his popularity grew exponentially, signaling that he wasn't about to flame out Tapes n' Tapes style, he started booking shows in places like D.C. and Philly but also Tucson, Ariz., and Paris. This increased the number of shows, "insane" in his words, and led to the formation of Feed the Animals, an album where, much like his live show, he lets his samples play out for a longer amount of time.

"I think with Night Ripper there was kind of a goal there of achieving a technical accomplishment," Gillis said. "And I think once that was established and people really reviewed it and took it in there was less need to go the same route."