[Animal Boything]

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.

Ice Skating in Heaven: A Few Words with Girl Talk

It’s a shame that the term “dream pop” is reserved for a dreary mode of indie rock characterized by whispery vocals and ethereal guitar textures. My dreams aren’t like that. My dreams are jumbled, absurdist collages of my psyche; if a pop song were to sound like a dream, it would have to sound like a hallucinating brain coughing up subconscious waste. Unless the stuff called “dream pop” is just supposed to put us to sleep, it’s an irritating misnomer. Mankind could do so much more with that name; shouldn’t there be pop music that accurately suggests the surrealism and inverted logic of dreams?
My dreams sound like Girl Talk. Born Gregg Gillis, Philly resident Girl Talk crafts electronic tracks that sound like the malfunctioning subconscious minds of the deeply pop-obsessed. Imagine Rick Dees having a delirious fever-dream after a stressful Weekly Top 40 taping, or Carson Daly on his deathbed with years of Total Request Live flashing before his eyes. A three-minute Girl Talk track pours out enough pop samples to fill up a full hour of pop radio, all maniacally squashed together into a perfectly-aligned menagerie of sound. To describe a Girl Talk song in writing would be close to impossible; even to catalogue all the samples used in any one track would be daunting. Recognizing fifty percent of the snippets of sound which get mashed up in the average Girl Talk joint would qualify one as a true pop expert.
For example, a recent internet release called “Pure Magic” (due to appear later this year on a 7” single released by 333 Recordings) is a frenetic hurricane of recent pop-rap tracks. Within the first minute, I can recognize tiny glimpses of hits by Kanye West, Lil’ Scrappy, Cam’ron, Digital Underground, Jay-Z, Juvenile, Petey Pablo and Clipse. These are only the bits I can recognize, mind you; plenty more half-second samples of pop songs slip by me, familiar, but too brief and obscured to place. It’s like a lightning round of Name That Tune in which we’re expected to pick out songs based on a single word (Jay-Z shouting “Hov’!” or Baby yelling “ey!”) or a fraction of a riff (a few notes of the liquid bassline from “The Humpty Dance”). While few among us could catch every reference and name every song, anyone who keeps up with pop music will find every second of it eerily familiar.
The breath of material he plunders is immense; guitar solos from Manfred Mann’s Earth Band nestle alongside Lil’ Jon lyrics and Coldplay piano melodies. Girl Talk’s biography on his website contains a list of his favorite artists, which range from The Lovin’ Spoonful to 2 Live Crew. How did this madman come to cultivate such a broad taste?
“I think I’m a pretty normal guy when it comes to listening to music,” Gillis tells me. “Most people enjoy a wide range of music; it’s typically only the underground types that confine themselves to strict genres and styles. I think the diverse sampling in my music gears it to a more general crowd. I’d hope that people who don’t know anything about weird electronic music could be blasting my songs in their car Friday night on their way to a party. Once you get deep enough into any particular underground scene, you can’t like or make music far from that style without people saying you’re into it for ironic or kitsch or novelty reasons. Fuck that.”
Early on, Girl Talk has brought up the I-word. It’s easy to assume that there’s a large element of ironic detachment involved in his music, since the general view among hipsters is that it’s impossible to properly enjoy mainstream proletarian music without a layer of irony insulating them from the common man. Girl Talk seems to be hip to just about everything under the sun, but he insists upon operating without the safety net of irony.
“Just because I understand why people would be really into Venetian Snares doesn’t mean that my love for Hall and Oates is an ironic thing. People oftentimes assume that if you’re not into a sort of underground music, it’s because you’re unexposed to it or don’t get it. I ‘get it’ when it comes to the appeal for experimental electronics, but I just like Top 40 better. It's totally un-ironic. I seriously don’t listen to much current underground music. When I get in my car, I turn the radio to the light rock radio station or I throw in my Nirvana cassette or whatever. I listen to ninety percent pop music.”
Accordingly, all manner of pop songs come under his knife. One of the unique joys of his music is hearing two songs that have no business within a mile of each other momentarily colliding. A track on his second LP begins with the piano intro to Richard Marx’s dorky pop hit “Right Here Waiting” overlaid with the lyrics to Khia’s raunchy “My Neck, My Back”: “all you ladies pop your pussy like this / shake your body don’t stop don’t miss.” Another track finds the chorus of Superdrag’s indie hit “Sucked Out” slapped on top of the notorious stadium-rock riff of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer.” The juxtapositions are often hilarious, mostly because the songs involved fit together like puzzle pieces, as if they were always meant to be combined. I asked Mr. Gillis if the primary concern of these combinations was humor value or perfect musical counterpoint:
“It’s always based primarily on what I think sounds the best together. There’s definitely a humorous aspect to some of the juxtapositions, but I’m not trying to make goofball music. It’s kind of like Mobb Deep rapping over Thomas Dolby or Diddy rapping over the Police. That initially has some novelty and comedy value but people get over it and just get into the song itself. I like that Bon Jovi riff and that Superdrag chorus, and when I put them together, I think it sounds great. It’s funny, but I hope people can get over that and just be into it on a musical level.”
The earnestness of Gregg Gillis’s love of pop music is disarming. While he samples samples and makes dance tracks out of dance tracks, he prefers not to consider the avant-garde levels on which he operates. “I try not to think about the mind-blowing-ness of my music. Usually when I’m in a deep mood, I’ll keep my mind off of it by watching ‘Son of Mask.’” While his bizarre combinations bridge the gaps between far-flung pop styles, he’s not attempting any grand statements about our culture. “I don't try to make any statements in my music. The placements of the samples are all chosen specifically for musical reasons only. I don’t want people to think, I want people to sweat and cum and ice skate in heaven.”