All Girl Talk Photos: Josh Sisk

At 16 I hit a crisis—I walked away from the classical training I began 10 years earlier. I didn’t give it up entirely, but I decided I wasn’t going to pursue becoming a classical cellist as a career. Very quickly the musical void left by the absencesof practicing multiple hours a day was soon filled by electronic music. I was introduced to avant-garde electronic music at an early age; so making sounds on the computer didn’t seem odd while all my friends were out starting punk bands. I eventually fell into Electronic Dance Music, and I never looked back.

My take on popular music may be somewhat unique, given that I moved from the more esoteric to the more mainstream, not the other way around. To make a generalization the more vanguard electronic acts, though they may be pushing into new territory, are also the lesser-attended live acts. The more trite, derivative acts, though lacking in that exploratory nature, are the larger draws. I think it is safe to say that this generally holds true for any genre, and I’d get into the realm of speculation if I were to attribute reasons to why this happens. But here are some concrete examples from last week. Read the rest…

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MP3: Girl Talk – Bounce That from Night Ripper (2006)

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MP3: Girl Talk – Let Me See You from Don’t Feed the Animals (2008)

This fella probably needs little to no introduction.  Girl Talk has undoubtedly exploded.  Look no further than the utterly and completely sold-out shows lining his tour trek, including his stops at 9:30 Club this Friday Oct 10 and Sonar this Saturday Oct 11.  So let’s just get right to it.

Aural States- Talk a bit about how you actually put together the mash-up. You don’t use Ableton, correct?

Gregg Gillis- I use Audio Mulch. Basically Audio Mulch is a program that you can do a variety of things in. It is primarily used for sound processing, running things through it and putting effects on it, or manipulating pre-existing source material. But I use it in a way that utilizes the looping functions on it. I use a lot of loop players, and kind of work around having hundreds of loops in front of me. I then isolate the actual pieces of music that you hear as much as possible.

Typically, during a set there will be two to ten loops playing at any particular time. The actual combination of material is usually pre-thought out. It’s not like I’m improvising on the spot. But the transition from segment to segment is often times not as thought-out. So basically it is a whole bunch of loops in front of me, a variety of material, usually a bit more than I want to play, so I have a bit of freedom to jump around. I put together sound collages in real time basically. The software, I have always just basically used it to bring in ideas. When I record an album, that’s how I edit myself. But live it’s all triggering the loops and samples on the fly.

AS- You did a video during Whartscape, where you threaten Youtube fan video makers with legal action. This must be a joke? Read the rest…

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MP3: Girl Talk – No Pause

I guess I’m going to music industry hell.

Last Thursday morning, Girl Talk’s fourth official release, “Feed the Animals” was made public by Illegal Art, posted for download on the record company’s website, using the illustrious “pick your own” pricing schematic.

And…. I didn’t pay a single cent for it.

The peeps at illegal art made a few changes to the “Radiohead Model” of online aural distribution– After paying $0.0– the website asked me why. Great idea. Why not gain some insight into the demented brains of cheapskates, hobos, and assholes like me!

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