Party album of the CENTURY
 

I don't post here a lot anymore, but this is fucking important.

Girl Talk - Night Ripper

8-minute excerpt (my brother's bandwidth, be gentle)

link to more sample tracks, press release and ordering information

Sample tracks don't really do it justice, it's basically one 40-minute song.

This record has seriously blown the minds of everyone I know who has heard it, but since his extreme usage of samples forces him to remain underground, you are not exactly going to see Girl Talk on Mtv. Buy this album. Tell others to buy this album. This guy deserves to go platinum. I just put in an order for 15 copies because so many of my friends want one.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

not really my idea of party music but whatever ;)

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Nah, thats not the party album of the century ;) surely it has to be this one. Its worth it just for the cover! :D

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Wtf? I don't know that song (consciously) but could anybody please confirm it's weird?

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Everyone's got their own taste...I couldn't stand more than 30 seconds :D

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

i could never really understand the idea of a "party album"...does it mean the artist intends it to be a fun collection of songs that you listen to straight through at a party? Or that every cut is dance-worthy or a good time single that you can't go wrong playing at your next bash?

Anyway, i can;t really see people doing this at a party anyway.

Two so-called party albums i can think of: Ringo Starr's "I Wanna Be Santa" Christmas album ( i don't own this, thankfully, but when i came out, the press was saying "party album of the year!". Riiiight). Beck's "Midnite Vultures" ( a heck of a record, yes, but probably best taken in bits).

Personally, when i'm at a party, i like a little variety from the tunes. nothing annoys me more than when whomever is "Deejaying" leaves on a record or CD by one artist because the songs are mixed together. Booo! Shows no effort!;)

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

personally if I'd have to go trough my cd's for an "ultimate" party album I would probably put on something like Stanton Warriors - the Stantion Session or maybe the best of De-Phazz if it's gonna be a bit more downtempo.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

What on earth are you talking about? Did you click any of those links? Because it really sounds like you did not.

Also, I hate all of you, so far. I really do.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Avalanches.

party music.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

2 live crew...



at least the parties i like



but actually, ac/dc is the party music i grew up with and love. nothing can get me going like hells bells!

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

and Back in Black and Dirty Deeds (no pun intnd) and, and, and

yeah I love AC/DC too.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

OBVIOUSLY.

this is.
so fucking crazy
and pretty damn amazing. straight shot hedonism, no smarts, just flat out destruction. yeah, it can be party, but it will both confuse and exhaust.
which is of course fantastic.

i love this and i want to buy it and i am broke until further notice. thanks :mad:

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

This shit is terrible. Hipster bullshit to the fullest effect. I swear there is a template for this shit by now. People in cool haircuts and ironic tees be getting down. Ick. "We have such a stick up our art-school asses that the only way we can engage with pop culture is through a slick layer of irony" double ick.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Hahahahahaahaaa,
I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing WITH you. And surely you've been coming to the dirty boards long enough to know you'll get some sort of critique for a suggestion?

FYI: I don't talk about Stryper anymo(er...)

ze crank!

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

um...

i have plenty of friends who'd enjoy this who arent hopeless hipsters. barely so, even. they like stuff like this because it's pretty fun. and this one happens to be frenetic enough to warrant the strange alt-rock hiccup or two scattered througout . it ain't clever, but it doesnt stop moving, and does so quick enough to to keep itself excited.

then again i have a hard time spotting irony in music. i usually figure if people do stuff like this they at least like, if not love it enough to work on it as much as they do. if it were trully terrible it'd use its "too cool for thou" irony to purposely fuck up or do something awkward. this is too wrapped up in remaining nuts to be just fucking around.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

the sample tracks are terrible. it's like i'm listening to two different albums.

did you just cop the best nine minutes or is this whole thing up to snuff?

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Very, very hipster. Tyler is right. ;)

One would argue that it's nonetheless fun music--but I'd counter that something about the way these songs are put together actually makes the sum add up to less than each of its individual parts! There's nothing wrong with enjoying a single well-built party song for everything that it is, and still more--actually, it can take a darned open mind.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Changes too often more my taste.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Exactly what i wrote. What exactly makes something a party album? An album that you'd play straight through? A compilation disc? A dj mix? Depends on what kinda party you're throwing and for whom. But the two silly examples i gave are both LPs that were advertised as "party albums", which makes me question who really plays them from start to finish without their guests getting fed up.
Maybe this is (i can't really dig it, thanks for the links, though), but it's clearly not for everyone. Calling something the whatever album of the CENTURY is bound for some backlash anyway, imho...better let the music defend, and this does not.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Well, he's all excited, so he calls it the album of the century. Don't take it too seriously. If you can whine about this, you can whine about almost everything ;)

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

but most of all: don't call it only 6 years after the century started...!

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

if you don't know it when you hear it, then what's the point in saying? it's like asking mr. kirby from 'all that heaven allows' how to lead a satisfying life.

and anyway it's called 'hype' you eunuchs. it's an invaluable and inseprable aspect of music.

i'd rather read that, being suitable to what is being plugged, rather than "i say, this is quite a cracker"

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Yeah, lay off A.B. for hyping it up. I much prefer wild enthusiasm to world-weary measured cynicism, and you should too. Too bad he's enthusiastic about a pretty crappy album, but hey you can't win em all.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

dubman: As I said before, the sample tracks don't really do it justice. Clipping parts from the middle removes the context, and this album is pure context.

My brother interviewed this guy once (which is as far as my connection to him goes). I decided to post the interview here because he actually addresses Tyler's points very directly, and it also goes a long way to sort of explain what's going on, because this is awfully strange music.

This will be posted in two parts, because it's long. I'd link it, but it's not online.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

part two comin' atcha

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

its got a sample of an old western (theme music to the film 'The Big Country') in it with a sort of rap vocals.................;)

*YAWN*

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

GOOD.

i have friends who are like this guy, who would be considered all hipstered out simply for their strange attitudes towards media consumption. it's like if there's a disconnect between how you look or think and what media you're into, then it's supposed to be ironic, a term which both confuses and angers them. one of them: she dresses up a little odd, as white as white can get, and is super aggro, but her love for mac-dre is VERY real. cheap photo-shops, drunken freestyling, knitting, and violent bay-area rap arent some escapist uber-indie ideal to her, it's what she loves, and she can't stand it when douches with zero imagination accuse her of not being serious about it.

and it sounds like this guy is coming somewhat from that. so as TACKY as it is, it's good to know that there's the same kind of LOVE put into it.

and that "dream-pop" bit was dead on :D

also, he seems to be on the same label as the bran flakes. big plus!

edit: just remembered that this connected brother of yours is dr. thorpe! nice to see him write seriously (and well) about music, although his SA column (and front page adventures, these days) continue to endlessly entertain (old newspaper brawl being pretty memorable).
does he actually think underworld is washed up? ;)

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

I'm not certain the Girl Talk interview does away with one's ability to read irony into his music. Regardless of whether or not the intent of his music, or his own appreciation of his source material, is ironic--his execution arguably exemplifies ironic kitsch, haphazardly (or intuitively, if you prefer, and as he claims) setting up juxtapositions and combinations with an effect that might be characterized as "detached amusement". Comparisons with mash-up culture at large are potentially misleading, since Girl Talk's roving, more-or-less linear pastiche of references more closely resembles a hyperactive DJ mix which avoids commitment or focus, rather than the single, potent welding of two or three songs in a 'proper' mash-up (which suggests an exploration of the potential in combining entire, complete pieces of music together)--the techniques may be identical, but have honestly been around since hip-hop. Painting his music as the newest manifestation of a nascent subculture is a bit of a red herring.

The overall effect, to me, is one of distancing--Girl Talk's musical choices may sound good and be real to him--but if your music simply amounts to a rapid succession of references (mash-ups included--combining this riff with that chorus simply references both at once), and you're not personally involved in any of the musical contexts or dialogues attached to your referents, then you're simply an observer, a consumer, playing connect-the-dots from outside the pop-cultural arena. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but the article and Girl Talk's quotes seemed to me to be making much more of something that's rather simple in reality.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

the proper mash-up, containing two or three peices of music, is a limited process that holds up its value mainly in what it's doing but is sonically a novelty and consumer-oriented style of creation (not that there's anything wrong with that last phrase). hearing a lust for life/will smith clash is kind of thrilling at first, but once will smith gets into his second wind we become painfully aware that the creator merely put two and two together in a brief flash of great association, but imagination soon gave way to technique in an endeavour where the initial idea doesn't have the gas to last longer than that first minute or so.
i think girl talk takes that initial experience and augments it, gives it depth, by not only being oriented towards a culturally aware audience but directly engaging with it by moving at speeds that render many of its parts indecipherable, sometimes refusing a focused or deliberate style, forcing a majority of listeners to constantly feel a familiarity with what they're hearing without being able to place it (but also reaching checkpoints that are easily identifiable). in a sense this one-ups even sampling, since we now have the benefit of relevantrecontextualization, having source material for which we were around to for and know being mangled in this way. i think girl talk explicitly transcends being clever and connecting things by how its discordant nature connects nothing at all, but to me seems like a coherent and enthusiastic work.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Well-put... two things to add. First, the beauty of this "attention deficit style" is that while the typical mash-up gets old as soon as you figure out what's going on, Girl Talk barely gives you TIME to figure out what's going on. He comes up with these amazing juxtapositions, but he only lets them last long enough to get the point across, then he mercilessly switches it up on you. People sometimes complain that he doesn't play enough of each song, but he's not mr. DJ here to play records for you, he's making his own music. Artists like The Avalanches and DJ Shadow are doing pretty much the same thing, you just don't normally catch as many of the references. Using immediately recognizable samples that recall whole songs is just part of his game, and it brings me to my other point.

In time, like anything of this nature, you get over the novelty of it, but that's when you realize that as music taken on its own terms, this album WORKS. At first hearing Biggie over Elton John is funny, even a little jarring, but after a few listens you're just in the groove, and that's when the real genius of Girl Talk hits. This music is "crazy" in concept, but in execution, all it is is flawless. He actually manages to keep the beat pumping for 40 minutes doing this shit. I dare any DJ to attempt it.

Dubman: Thanks for reading Dave's stuff. He has been very successful lately... he has a book deal based on his ongoing "Fashion SWAT" articles co-written with the wonderful Zack Parsons, and one of his "Your Band Sucks" articles was selected for inclusion in a reputable journal of the year's best music writing, apparently beating out such luminaries as Simon Reynolds.
And no, he actually digs Underworld almost as much as I do, that was just some harmless ribbing.

Also: Where's Tom? I think he'd like this album too.
PAGING DETOUR TO THIS THREAD

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

I don't know. A lot of this argument seems to operate under arbitrary presumptions: Girl Talk's speed isn't utterly indecipherable to me, only irritating; it's precisely because I am able to follow his manifold juxtapositions and am consistently confronted by yet another switch-up that I find his strategy deflating rather than profound. You may call it transcendent, on account of its being different; I just find it cowardly and unsuccessful in a relatively new way. ;)

I'm also not sure what you mean by a "relevant" recontextualization. It can't be assumed that everyone knows this source material, just as it can't be assumed that in "proper" sampling (I'm not sure there is actually a distinction to be made between this and Girl Talk's sampling) that the audience isn't expected to catch the references (Kanye West immediately springs to mind). Again, you may call the music's discordance profound, but I just call it ... weakly ironic and ironically weak, whether or not it claims to be un-ironic. :)

But honestly, if it feels enthusiastic to you, then by all means be enthused. I'll just note that your reading of his approach's significance is as subject to debate as the effectiveness of his music.

And Animal Boything (I like your name by the way), I'm not sure the "making his own music" card works, for all the reasons I outlined in my previous post. The Avalanches and DJ Shadow are enormously informed by a DJ sensibility, and their music does formally and conceptually hold much in common with the standard DJ set. Girl Talk's music especially can't be taken on its own terms, because its cleverness is based on dot-connecting. Sampling, no matter how creative (again, not creative enough in this case IMHO), will never suddenly become creating--and that's not the point. I would argue that the Avalanches' and Shadow's music utilizes the capabilities of computer-based sequencing and sampling much more extensively than Girl Talk. One analogy that comes to mind: the former two would twist the words in a given sentence into new catchphrases, while Girl Talk simply rearranges them and renders them gibberish. This may seem to contradict my above claim that Girl Talk is not indecipherable, but it's more the effect of being able to read the collection of words, which never congeal into a full sentence. Not to take the hackneyed concept too seriously, but there's quite literally no "statement" being made here.

Still--it's perfectly fine to appreciate the consistency of his execution, but I tend to think of that as a perfection of an exercise, or a craft, rather than a creation of something new (sampling or not), i.e. a full art. I guess I'm just picturing a certain line that he definitely does not cross, precisely because he takes this one approach so far (to little consequence, IMO).

As a good friend of mine put it, "T.I. is the party album of the year". :D

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

either i dont follow or this is a matter of opinion

7/10 whatever is sampled in a song is either completly obscure to the point that people get excited about what they do recognize. this throws everything you do know at you, and, to me, at a speed where you're constanly going "i know that" but then it's gone. i find it pretty engaging, but apparently there's different ways of hearing it. and again, i completly do not understand how something can be ironic without it intending to be.

oh absolutely ;). i'm not trying to bring any hammer down, it's just something i feel has something worth arguing for.

um, that's exactly what i'm trying to say it is, and others try to pass off worse efforts as such, and this is one of the few i feel has acheived that

i think it's a pretty major part

what about that makes them more valuable than what we have here? more computer time=more work=more worth? they're crtainly doing something different, something more catchy with their craft, and the avalanches no doubt trounce this into the next month's lunch, but i fail to see how that aspect you point out renders girl talk not worth the time of day.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

I haven't had a chance to listen to this yet (though I'm intrigued) so all I have to add is, man, Superdrag 'Sucked Out'. I have not even thought about that song in years.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

I donwloaded the clip when you first posted it, I didn't hate it, but it seemed a little samey - soulwax, playgroup, earworm etc.

But if you insist that the whole album is hot I will check it out :)

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

i was just edited my tom.
i feel all flush.


perhaps the best i've ever had?

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Hey, Thats Vanilla Ice, isnt it???

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

I just heard this the other day, I thought it was pretty interesting...most of the music sampled really ain't my style though, and when he sampled "My Humps" I nearly had to turn it off, what a godawful song that is! Interesting mashups though...reminds me a bit of that thing they did with the two Nickelback songs, putting one in each speaker to show how similar they were...this really seems to say something about how all pop music is more or less the same, although I doubt that's the point he was trying to make. Anyone hear any of his other stuff?

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

i think its best not to get overly analytical with music like this, because that seems to defeat the entire point of "party" The claim was this is the party album of the century, not the album of the century, and if music isn't subjective than what constitutes a good party certainly is.

I don't know my parents beat me and locked me in a closet, but I assume parties are like people hanging out dangling drinks in their hands and every once in a while a rhythm track from KCHEEZ 99 FM, classic oldies comes in, and you get a few friendly nods and maybe someone singing loudly and its done what it needs to do, not like save the planet or something.

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

Well ... I guess I'm just saying that it still sounds like ironic music to me, and that has more of an effect on my interpretation of the record than Girl Talk's own statements do. As Tom mentions, it's a lot like the Playgroup mega-DJ Eighties mix, just with less interesting mixes, worse flow, and more hype. :D

I do understand you're saying that Girl Talk is creating something very new, but I felt you, or maybe just Animal Boything, were still conflating what amounts to a simple extension of DJ ideas with a raw exploration of new territory. The source of my distaste for this music is my feeling that he is basically caricaturing all that is good and valuable about DJ/mashup culture simply by exaggerating its core qualities between 2 - 3.5 times over, yet is interpreted as profoundly breaking away from all of that by drawing on some personal genius sensibility. I think that's totally misguided!

Never said anything of the sort. More ideas, more like. :)

Re: Party album of the CENTURY
 

While I would normally disagree with you on principle, I do feel that I've over-stretched myself here--others certainly deserve this amount of controversy and more, like M.I.A. or somesuch. :D