Girl Talk

I was listening to NPR's rundown of the "Best Albums of the Year So Far," and one particularly caught my ear-- "Feed the Animals" by Girl Talk. Girl Talk doesn't sound like somthing I'd listen to, but it's not what you think at all.

"Girl Talk" is one guy, Gregg Gillis, who samples all sorts of music (most of it from the 90s on) and mashes it back together in amazing ways. Now I've heard other sample mash-ups, but nothing like this. What this guy does is absolutely amazing. He takes songs from all kinds of genres and puts them together damn near seamlessly. Most of the vocals he takes from rap, but the background music comes from nearly everything--Prince, Fergie, Metallica, Gwen Stephanie, Tone-Loc, Temple of the Dog (Yep), all sorts of other stuff I recognize but can't think of now, but literally, everything. I'm not well-versed enough in music technicality to be able to talk intelligently about what he's doing or why it works, but it seems like he's got a knack for finding extremely divergent musical forms that share basic beat and tonal forms--the music just plain out works. I think this is why most of the vocals are rap-based, the cadence and beat of rap is most easily superimposable over other musical styles.

Seriously, go listen to this yourself. It's incredible, and fun as hell. You can listen to the whole album on his Myspace page for free: http://www.myspace.com/girltalk. The album works either as separate tracks or as a single long mash (I think I'm using that word right, but I might not be).

Also, you can buy the ablum for whatever you want--seriously. It's for sale online and you just name your own price. Anything at all allows you to download the album, at least 5 bucks gets you the ablum and some bonus stuff, and at least $10 gets you all that plus an actual CD. I think that's a cool way to do it. It's here:

http://74.124.198.47/illegal-art.net/__girl__talk___feed__the__anima.ls___/