I, like any other music nut, get super excited when I get my hands on a new album from one of my favourite artists and simply cannot wait to listen to it. My most recent obsession is mashup artist Girl Talk’s latest release, All Day, the fifth album released under the Illegal Art record label. Girl Talk, consisting of single member Gregg Micheal Gillis is known for its mashup and digital sample style of music and out of control concerts. Each album is meant to be listened to as one continuous track, and for around an hour or so samples of both mainstream hits and age-old classics are seamlessly weaved together with an infectious beat that will have you up on your feet dancing in a matter of seconds. It’s a brilliant style that appeals to pretty much anyone, irrespective of their music preferences. The most astounding little factoid about this club sensation – Gillis is an engineer.
Gillis started making music while attending highschool in Pittsburgh, and finally started the ‘Girl Talk’ project while studying biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. What started as remixing around a dozen unauthorized samples of various songs gradually developed into the album-lengths of music he currently produces. The New York Times described his type of music as ‘a lawsuit waiting to happen’, but Gillis brilliantly argues that those claims are mainly a result of mainstream media “wanting to create controversy where it doesn’t really exist”. He mainly cites fair use policies as the legal backbone of his music. While his music’s popularity ran rampant on the underground music scene, he also focused on tissue engineering both during his degree and later in industry, because everybody needs a hobby. He continued to embody the ‘work hard, play hard’ manifesto to its fullest until 2007, when he finally left his job as an engineer to focus on music full-time.
Although he may not have been generating tissues in a lab, Gillis’s music is the product of a thought process that could only belong to an engineer. The way he seamlessly blends so many different sounds together to create something that is so uniquely his own is pure innovation. And not only engineers have noticed; his 2008 album Feed the Animals was number 4 in Time magazine’s top 10 albums of 2008, and was number 24 on Rolling Stone’s top 50 albums of 2008. Add to this countless sold-out tours and thousands of album downloads. Has the success gotten the better of Gillis? I wouldn’t say so – in true engineering fashion, his albums are only available by download, and they’re completely free of charge. No torrents or DC++ necessary.
His latest album, All Day, has a much different feel from some of his previous work. The first half of the album has a slightly more ‘grunge’ feel and isn’t quite as upbeat and dance-like as say, Feed the Animals. It’s still really enjoyable, but it definitely came as a bit of a shock the first time I listened to it. This was all part of the plan however, since the second half of the album picks up the pace and has a phenomenal, care-free dance hall feel to it that you simply can’t not dance. Seriously, I dare you to try. Overall, I deem this another successful release by Girl Talk, and I’m already trying to work out plans to see his upcoming show in Montreal in March – the only Canadian stop on his upcoming tour.
Check out All Day and other albums by Girl Talk at illegal-art.net or on myspace, and just remember – he’s an engineer too!
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