Girl Talk steals music; gives it to you for freeez
When we heard there was a new track up on Girl Talk’s MySpace earlier this week, we rushed over to check out what kinds of crazy mash-up concoctions Gregg Gillis has whipped up now. “I,” which was mysteriously the only track on Gillis’ MySpace, seemed like a throwback to his earlier albums - no lack of infectious beats, but if he was sampling anything at all it was fragmented to the point of imperceptibility. “Oh!” we thought, “So this is what he’s going to do now? No more Night Ripper-style collisions of the 2 Live Crew and Pavement? No more Missy Elliot meets Neutral Milk Hotel?”
But, we were totally wrong. “I” has since disappeared from Gillis’ MySpace, replaced by a handful of tracks from Feed the Animals, Girl Talk’s fourth album, which he released on his website today, after hopping on the “pay what you want” train. (Insert obligatory references to In Rainbows here). Which pretty much makes him Robin Hood 2K8, stealing songs and giving them to us for free and all. Unless you want to pay for the extras:
"$5 or more includes the album as high quality mp3s, plus the album as one long track, which is how Gillis intended for people to listen to the album. $10 or more includes all of the above and a packaged CD when its available in September."
Feed the Animals is really exactly what you’d expect after Night Ripper: an impossible amount of song samples smashed into 14 tracks - there’s already a wiki page detailing all of the songs that made the cut (hey, if we were in a band, we'd probably want in on a Girl Talk song), of course, but it doesn’t seem entirely accurate yet. We swear we heard “If You Steal My Sunshine” by Len (side note: we've been trying for about 10 years to forget that song ever existed. Thanks, Girl Talk.) in “No Pause,” but it's nowhere to been seen on the list of samples for that track. Wiki-editing Girl Talk fans, get thee to correcting ASAP!! Elsewhere on the album, Yo La Tengo and “Ghetto Superstar” meet like pineapple on pizza; while Britney Spears’ “Gimme More” sounds oddly dark and enticing with Air’s “Sexy Boy.” The concept is undoubtedly predictable for Gillis but, like we said last time, wholly addictive.
Download: Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
-Caitlin E. Curran