by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

In the hands of Pittsburgh, PA’s Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, the mash-up has metastasized. Forget two disparate tracks, or even a threesome—every joint on Girl Talk’s new album, Night Ripper, is an orgy of a dozen or more hip hop hits, alt-rock anthems and lovably cheesy dance jams, a half-hour DJ set compacted into three minutes. I’d list off a bunch of his bites, but that would spoil the hyperactive games of name-that-tune that they’ll inspire in those not already spazzing out on the dancefloor. No dummy, Gillis has also sided with old-school purveyors of plunderphonics like Negativland is seeking level legal ground for what have to be some of the wickedest sounds around right now.

Mirror: I’m wondering if there isn’t some method to your madness, some principles by which you dovetail a dozen-plus snippets together.

Gregg Gillis: I kind of make my records as I’m working live sets. Whenever I do live shows, I mix and match loops and bits and pieces on the fly. But beforehand, I have it all composed out to what I could potentially mix with each other. Before Night Ripper was released, there were about two years’ worth of me fine-tuning different elements through the live show. I didn’t just sit down one day and decide, this song is gonna mix with these three songs and then go into this. That would be an impossible task for anyone.

M: I understand your live show is kinda nuts—“near-nudity” and “insanity” are descriptions that seem to follow you around.

GG: Right, right. I think that when I started doing this, about six years ago, it was all based on pop-music samples, but I was making more experimental music. At that time, around 2000, there was a whole movement of boring, boring shows, watching these people sit there with their laptops. Because my music was experimental, I made a point at early shows to make it exciting, to have dance squads and pyrotechnics and whatnot—a full-blown show. Over the years, my music has faded into a lot more accessible and party-able material, and equally, the live show has faded off in theatrics. But now it’s gotten to the point where I don’t even feel the need to entertain as much. I like to go crazy, have a good time and get people riled up, but it’s been great at recent shows because I think people know that and read about that, so everyone comes out ready to go crazy.

M: You seem to be dialed in a bit with the Negativland scene and of course the Fair Use legal argument they champion so articulately.

GG: It’s kind of what we stand by. It is really a grey area—I’ve always said that my music isn’t overtly politically based or pushing any ideals, I’d like the music to come first, but there are a lot of grey areas as far as sample-based albums that technically should be released legally, but by the law, it’s really confusing whether the songs are fair use or not. It seems like if someone isn’t potentially hurting the market, if the overall purpose isn’t financial gain and there’s actually some artistic or political motive, the laws should open up a little bit. I’m not hurting any of the artists I’ve sampled, yet if you take my album away, all you’re doing is preventing this music from reaching the handful of people who like it.

With X-Wam and DJ Bliss at Lambi on
Saturday, Oct. 21, 9 p.m., $15

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