They’ll surely talk about Girl Talk
Over the years I have built a reputation among my friends as the go-to guy when it comes to music. I obsessively collect CDs and I love reading about anything related to music. I may love indie the fiercest but I do listen to other types of music as well. In my CD shelf it will not be uncommon to see Janet Jackson alongside Jessamine or Norah Jones sharing shelf space with Nusrath Fateh Ali Khan and Owen (yes, I sort my CDs alphabetically).
A couple of weeks ago a friend asked me for recommendations for music he can play at his party. He already knew that I’ve been grooving to The Klaxons so I wanted to throw him a curve ball and recommend an artist that he most probably never even heard. So, very casually, I said “Girl Talk.” He asked me if it sounded if I was recommending something along the lines of The Klaxons. I smiled, gave him my iPod, and told him to just listen for himself. The look on his face said it all — it was a mixture of bewilderment, dawning comprehension and a loopy grin. A good description for Girl Talk’s music, if you ask me.
You see, Girl Talk (which is the moniker of Greg Gillis) makes what I’ve come to call Frankenmusic. Gillis pastes together snippets from different songs in order to make a whole new song. Imagine DJ Shadow but only with more recognizable samples and a tongue-in-cheek perspective towards the whole process and you’ve got the basic idea behind Girl Talk. In one song, you’d probably hear a part from The Pixies’ Where is My Mind spliced to James Taylor’s Your Smiling Face while D4L raps over the track.
My friend went home with the intent of playing Girl Talk’s Night Ripper album. I’m pretty sure that the party will be a success gauging by the music he intends to play.
Girl Talk, Greg Gillis, Pixies, Night Ripper
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