Sampling and sweating his way to success
‘Un-DJ’ Girl Talk brings his mashed-up electronic musical melee to the masses
Hearing the voice of self-proclaimed “un-DJ” Girl Talk (real name: Gregg Gillis) discuss his views on the legitimacy of music sampling as a higher art form by using Ying Yang Twins’ “Wait (The Whisper Song)” overlapped on top of a peppy techno beat may make one skeptical, and even more so when the song segues into the Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” seconds later.
Yet this is just the beginning of a peculiar and expedient world revolving around the importance of one musical fragment and the multitudes of possibilities created from it.
Take Gillis’ voice itself, for example; one would expect the strained tones of someone speaking through solid gold grills, or perhaps the acid-jeans whisper of a remiss punk rocker, or even the easily agreeable voice of a bubblegum pop singer. Anything in tune with the pop-culture regurgitation represented by the dozens of genre-spanning samples littering his music, which he will bring to the Echo on Saturday night.
Instead, Gillis, who works a part-time day job in Philadelphia during the week and plays shows on weekends, has as much of a level tone as one would expect from an avant-savant who turned a rising demand for ADD remixes into MTV afterparties for Paris Hilton and 50 Cent.
Though the ostentatious blending of such opposing forces as the dirtiest of sex-oriented hip-hop and a pleasant folk melody may appear a wry attempt at grabbing attention, it is actually the final iteration of a lifetime of interest in what he calls “tape collaging, sampling, and the noise/experimental movement.”
“To me, the foundation of music, the foundation of art even, is sampling,” Gillis said. “Ideas building upon themselves, be them small or big, from any live band, any original instrumentation.”
Reworking and blending beats live, whether in front of an underground crowd of raving fans holding up signs such as “Girl Talk! Masturbated on stage” or on a larger scale alongside the likes of Kanye West, is the one artistic constant that has allowed Gillis to maintain an original position as creator against a thousand warring sound bites.
“I want to create music that has its own identity, so ideally I want you to hear a song and recognize its familiar elements, but simultaneously you’re like, ‘that’s a Girl Talk beat,’” Gillis said.
Though Gillis’ newest album, “Night Ripper,” has instantly been touted by Pitchfork Media and other critical institutions as the apex of the quickly emerging genre of the mash-up, Gillis is uncomfortable with the newfound characterization.
“I think mash-ups, or at least the phrase ‘mash-ups’ as a whole just jumped to popularity and already peaked out,” he said.
Straying from the sometimes droning and headache-inducing qualities of mainstay rave DJs, Gillis’ music instead directly satisfies the need for constant stimulation in an audience with a microscopic attention span.
“The aesthetic preference is to get things as quickly edited as possible. Very quick, everything’s moving very quick. It’s all about how many samples you can cram in. It’s about precision and mathematical calculations.” Gillis said.
Though this may sound like an immobilizing activity, Gillis’ deft manipulation of his laptop happens amidst pelvic gyrations and an onslaught of fans collectively trying to leap on stage. The cramming of sold-out crowds into 200- to 400-person capacity club spaces also assists the easiness of proximity.
Saturday’s show at the Echo should be no exception.
“I try to break down the barriers and interact with the crowd as much as possible,” Gillis said.
While encouraging everything from clothing removal to drinks being poured on him, he still manages to hit the crowd with the instant gratification of his ready-made samples.
But for Gillis, it’s the crowd that adds the final ingredient to his deftly baked sonic-layer cake.
“I like it when people get comfortable to the point where it’s like I’m their best friend, where they could just come up and do whatever they want to me,” Gillis said.



