In 2006, Girl Talk (aka Gregg Gillis) unleashed the nonstop sample barrage that is Night Ripper, creating one of the best dance records of the decade. Last Saturday, he brought his pop orgy to Club 770. Sometime between the first huge kick drum and the moment the entire crowd flooded the stage shortly after, one thing became abundantly clear—Girl Talk knows how to throw a kick-ass party.
The Daily Cardinal sat down with the laptop beatsmith before his set.
The Daily Cardinal: Describe the process of putting together a Girl Talk track.
Girl Talk: I don't really think in terms of tracks. For my live set tonight there's a whole bunch of loops and samples—it's this big piece of music with all of these individual parts. I sample stuff all the time, so if it gets boring to me or doesn't sound good, I just start swapping. ""Here's a new melody. This a capella doesn't sound great with the beat, so let's switch it around."" It's a big piece of music that's constantly changing, but that same template has been there for the past three years. Every live show, I mix it up a little bit so it keeps evolving.
For Night Ripper, I was doing that and eventually I had enough material where I was like ""All right, I'm going to do an album out of this.""
DC: Do you have a set list ready before you play a show?
GT: I put together roughly an hour of material per show. I try not to go over that, but I used to only play for 20 minutes, just go nuts and be out.
It's a loose set list. I have to click around to add certain things, so I have to practice it.
DC: Your live shows are known to get pretty raucous—has your laptop ever been threatened?
GT: I've gone through a few laptops. Actually, these days it's been cool—I put a layer of plastic wrap in front of it. They're surprisingly durable and I always have a back-up laptop.
I had a show on a Wednesday night—I almost never play during the week 'cause I have a job—for CMJ. At the show, I smashed the computer by accident and it snapped in half. I had a show on Friday, so I had to wake up the next day and buy a computer right away. Then I flew into Pittsburgh, got in at 11 p.m., put everything on that computer and got it all ready, then went to work the next day on Friday and afterwards flew out to the next show. That was the ultimate worst situation.
DC: You should do a Pete Townshend thing and smash your laptop at your show.
GT: [Laughs] The laptop I did break I brought to my New Year's Eve show. I put some sparklers that said 2007 on it and we crowd-surfed it. It looked like someone took it home—it was completely dead.
DC: What's the best show you've ever played?
GT: I just played South by Southwest last week. The last show I played there on Saturday night was the official public show. At the end, there were topless women on the stage, which was cool. As I was leaving, I saw two separate pairs of female underwear laying on the ground.
DC: Nice. Definitely good for a laptop-based show. I don't think Autechre or any of those guys deal with that too much.
GT: Maybe Autechre. That's about it though. [laughs]
DC: Yeah, I'd probably throw my panties at Autechre. Anyhow, you said you're still working the biomedical engineering job. How are you dealing with it these days when you play shows every weekend all over the country?
GT: I've been stressing out a bit. I'm definitely in the stages of thinking about quitting. The shows and remixes—the money is enough where I could support myself. I like the job, but I just cannot keep. I've been getting so many remix offers that I just lose track of it.
DC: It must be difficult to do international shows.
GT: It's been tough. I've done a couple one-offs internationally. I did one in Guadalajara, Mexico, a few weeks ago. I would love to do a week in Europe, at the very least. It'd be amazing, but I can't do that now since I have 12 vacation days to get through in a year.
DC: As far as the legality issue of the album is concerned, have you dealt with any issues?
GT: No problems... so far, everything has been in our favor.
DC: How has your life changed since the web and the mainstream music press have embraced you?
GT: I think it's pretty much the same, just busier. Every weekend is totally insane and doing interviews is weird, but it's become the normal thing now.
I've been doing this for six or seven years. The music used to be a bit weirder, but it was a very similar style of performance and similar aesthetic for a long time now. I was very used to driving eight hours to play for 10 people and make half my gas money there. I was fine doing that—I thought I was doing well before all this recent craziness.
Being able to play for a lot people every weekend, having a lot of people know me, that's cool, but outside of that my personal life is exactly the same.
DC: Are you working on a new album?
GT: I don't know. If I can quit my job and have more time to work on it. Now, I always change the live sets for shows, so eventually I'll have 40 minutes worth of new material, roughly. Constantly working on music, but no direct plans on what to do with an album.
DC: Who is your favorite producer?
GT: Timbaland. I just saw Justin Timberlake on Monday and Timbaland had a 30-minute set in the middle ... Guys like that are insane. They have no concept of pop versus hip-hop. They're into everything.
AD: What's the best party you ever went to?
GT: My friend Mike Ray had a birthday party in Cleveland when I was about 20 years old. It was like one of the first official parties that went down [at his apartment]. I made a party mix that I played there. I remember a balcony caved in, but no one died. It was just complete pandemonium. Someone spilled paint everywhere and somehow it got on everyone and suddenly the whole room was covered in paint. Wherever you'd go, there was paint—it was just insane. Then people started lighting off fireworks in the house.
DC: There are people out there who weren't happy hearing Nas on top of a Pixies riff. What do you say to folks who call your sampling style blasphemous?
GT: It's interesting to hear when people say ""Oh, he's watering down hip-hop and putting it with indie music."" The crazy thing is that they say that Pitchfork or whatever gave me a good review, and now that community is into me when they never were before, but on the album, its almost all Top 40 samples. There's a couple Pixies, Sonic Youth, Boredoms. There's like 10 samples that are indie music. In terms of that, I never claimed to do true hip-hop, but at the same time, the basis of hip-hop from the beginning was using samples and doing sample-based music. I've always been a hip-hop fan, and it's not supposed to be ironic. I'm just recontextualizing and trying to do my own version of it. I hope people aren't saying that I'm making a mockery of rap music in any way. The way I put tracks together, it's almost an homage to the whole history of hip-hop.
DC: You've done remixes for Beck, Peter Bjorn and John and a bunch of other artists. How is remixing different than working on your own tracks?
GT: It depends. Peter Bjorn and John wanted to release the remix beforehand, so they said, ""We don't want to deal with clearing samples, so don't use samples."" I like making just pop music on the computer, so that's what I went for. But with Grizzly Bear, they came and asked me to do a remix that was just going to go on the web, so they said use what you want.
I just started a new remix band. I'm not doing any more remix work as Girl Talk, I'm doing it all as Trey Told 'Em with this friend of mine. We did the name change and started to work together, he's very good with computer music in general, he's in a band called Hearts of Darknesses on the Schematic label. It's nice to not have to put the Girl Talk label so people don't expect it to sound like Night Ripper... it's been cool.
DC: The change from Unstoppable to Night Ripper was huge—what made you move from Unstoppable's beatfuckery to the more sample-based party jams on Ripper?
GT: By the time I was playing the release party for Unstoppable, I was doing shows that sounded like [Night Ripper]. The point went people got really live was during the blantant samples. On Unstoppable, it's like 20% blatant samples, the other 80 % is beatfuckery. It wasn't a conscious decision, I just kind of slowly phased into dropping more blatant samples.
DC: Night Ripper has found fans in indie and more mainstream listeners alike. Is mainstream appeal an M.O. of your work as Girl Talk?
GT: I've played so many parties in Cleveland, where I went to school. I'm making music that's catered toward my best friends out there. They're all Top 40 people but know a lot about indie music, kind of like who I am. So I'm just trying to make fun music in that regard. It's funny, the different crowds coming out, cause you have indie kids, hip-hop kids, Top 40 people—I don't really care. Some people hate all the source material, love the album. Some people love the source material and the album. Whatever, however they're into it, I'm into it.
—Interview conducted by Adam Dylewski
