Pop music has been around for as long as anything. Gregg Gillis, better known to the world as Girl Talk has pretty much listened to anything and everything that's ever been released in that time period, from small to big names alike. He had a front page write up in the Arts & Entertainment section of the New York Times recently, and Time Magazine gave him the fourth best album of 2008 with Feed The Animals. If your familiar with the man's work, then major recognition like that is a double edged sword.
Girl Talk is not a DJ. I'm not even sure if he knows what to classify himself as. A "sound collage" are the words he chose in my interview with him below to describe his work to someone completely unfamiliar with what he does. I was able to chop it up on everything from his live mixing process, his album mixing process, eating Dorito's while he works, his influences and much more. I was even able enough to find out where the name comes from. Enough with the back story, below is our full conversation.illRoots: What's up man? How are you?
Girl Talk: I'm good, how about you?
iR: I'm doing good. I've been reading a lot about you recently in the news. Most notably in the New York Times. What was it like getting in there?
GT: It was cool. You know, they did a nice piece on the New York show I played. I had no idea that was going down and they put it on the front page of the Arts And Entertainment section. So I mean, that was big time. For me any exposure is great, but outside of that its the sort of thing where your parents will find out and get pumped.
iR: Definitely, that must be awesome. I also noticed that in Time Magazine you have the 4th best album of the year.
GT: Yeah, it's a fun thing. The music I was doing has grown a bit more accessible. It comes from a very underground world and I think when I started sampling a lot of the musicians I felt very far removed from them as it's a very different culture and world. When you're on the Time Magazine 'Top Albums of The Year' list and things like that, I'm surrounded by other artists that I actually sample, so to be in that company is very surreal.
iR: I can only imagine. Are you working on any projects coming up?
GT: Yeah, I kind of always work on music, with no real clear intention of what it's gonna go towards. So, playing a bunch of weekend shows this month. Just working on small, little elements and working to live sets.
iR: How would you explain the difference of performing a live show as compared to when your working on a project or album on your own time?
GT: I think the live show goes on to influence the albums, and then the albums also influence the live show. I think that on an album it's the sort of thing where i'll sit down and, even if I know that there will be a part where it will be Big Country with 'Whoomp! There It Is', the drums from Kraftwerk and Daft Punk, it may take me 8 hours to actually edit it together. Just in terms of getting the transitions right and doing specific parts. It's a very meticulous process, kinda going bit by bit by bit. Doing the last album probably took, ya know, coming up with all the ideas was a two year process, but actually editing it was six months of steadily sitting down for eight hours a day and working on small components. Where as the live show, I kinda take the style of the albums and a lot of the elements from the albums and perform them. It's all live sample-triggering, so you know, when you hear a kick drum come in or a hand clap or vocals, it's me actually triggering the samples live. Because of that, it's a similar pace to the album but it's a lot more free form and loose. I do that because it's impossible for me to perform as intricate as it would be on an album. Also because I think, ya know, the setting is a bit more functional, it's kind of party music. The albums are the sort of thing where if you just put it in for the first time it's a lot to wrap your head around. So with the live show I like to be a bit more blatant about revealing my cards. I may play 16 bars from a rap song with no music under it, just a beat. Then loop those 16 bars, then introduce music. To kind of get people accustomed to it or aware of what i'm doing. How I actually execute the sample triggering is different every night. Even if I have a loose idea of the arrangement, the execution will be different so it's definitely a freeform sort of thing.
iR: Being that you primarily rely on your laptop, do you ever feel critiqued by vinyl or CD based DJ's?
GT: Umm, a bit. It's a funny thing because I feel sort of removed from that world.
iR: Right.
Girl Talk - Bounce That
GT: I know the style of music I'm doing is related to a lot of DJ's. People hear samples and remixes and that's what a lot of other DJ's specialize in, but the world I come from, i've never really considered myself a DJ in the traditional sense. I've been doing this since 2000 and in the early days I always played with bands. Live, electronic artists, rock groups, rap bands, whatever. It was always like a live performance thing, I never played in dance clubs because in the eight years i've been doing this I've never played an unaltered song. Not once have I just turned on a Justin Timberlake song and let it play. It's always been manipulations of it. The kind of influences I have are guys like John Oswald, Negativland, Evolution Control Committee, and those are all people who never really DJ'd either but primarily worked with samples. It was more of a live performance thing. I think that in doing the style of music I do, I've never spun around in my life. It's always been a laptop thing and i've grown up watching laptop artists and that's where the influence comes from. So I think a lot of times when I hear more traditional style DJ's have an issue with me playing laptops, they are almost being a little bit ignorant of understanding where the style of music comes from. You see a lot of laptops integrated into DJ performances today and that's really changed the game. So automatically people will just assume that i'm a part of that boat, just cut out the whole turntable part of it. With my music, if you wanted to DJ in the traditional sense, if you had it on vinyl, you could mix tracks together but it would be a very different thing. Like when I perform, it's all live sample triggering. You would need, ya know, four hundred turntables and five hundred people loading up each loop and sample. It would just be impossible to actually execute that. So for the style of performance I do there's really no other way that you would even consider actually doing that outside of live sample triggering. I feel more in tune with, not musically, but performance/execution wise. It's more like a Daft Punk show where they're performing their music live. You don't want to hear them spin their songs into each other on vinyl. You want to hear them create and manipulate trigger samples, cut it up on filters, that sort of thing. That's what I do.
iR: During the year's that you've been performing, has their been any moments where something has gone wrong and thrown of the whole vibe of the show?
GT: Yeah, I mean, i've always had a very raw approach to performing and back when I was starting, playing more underground style shows, it was always the type of thing where I wanted to get in the audience faces and get a reaction. It's not something where I want it to be like a traditional dance night. I don't want it to just be a smooth sailing affair where it's straight up dance tunes all night. I think what that i've played a lot of house parties over the years and the shows now where they're at a bigger level I try to get in the audience a lot and get people up on stage. With that it becomes very chaotic and i'm open to that. A lot of times something may get unplugged or the fans might get to rowdy and the venue might need to stop the music for a little bit or something like that. I don't necessarily want that to happen, I like the show to go on smoothly, but at the same time I think the nature of the show, it's open to that sort of thing. I think sometimes people get bummed out a little bit when the music gets stopped, but for me it's just another component of the show. To me it's very similar to being at a house party and someone's playing an iPod and it gets unplugged and everyone boo's, but when you plug it back in it's like euphoria, it's very high point. I think that's kind of the chaotic nature of the show and it's something i've just grown to embrace over the years.
Photography By: Douglas DollarsiR: What would you say is your favorite part about performing live?
GT: Doing the music is a very slow, meticulous process at home, so it's kind of funny that it's the sort of thing where i'll sit in front of a computer for eight to ten hours working on a beat or something, hanging out by myself eating Dorito's. And then when I get to play a show I get to execute that in front of a whole bunch of people and everyone's partying and celebrating. It's very much like the payoff to all of the work at home.
iR: Has there been a favorite place that you've gone to perform?
GT: It's tough, I mean I love playing the hometown shows in Pittsburgh, just get a lot of family and friends and people that have seen the shows a lot over the years. Just this last year, a stand out show for me was Lollapalooza in Chicago. I was just very excited to be a part of that tradition and I loved the lineup and I had a lot of friends in Chicago. It was the sort of thing where I played at five o'clock in the evening, and it was relatively early as I got there around three o'clock so I didn't even have much time to hang out before the show. Before I knew it I was up on stage in front of thousands of people and it was very abrupt at the beginning of the show, then it went smooth sailing from there. There were tons of people that were really into it and i've played a handful of festivals through the years but I think that as this project has progressed the fan-base has grown bigger and along with that I think the profile at the festivals is more big. It's not like I'm playing to a whole bunch of people that don't know me. It's more or less I'm playing to a ton of people who came to see me at this particular event. So that Lollapalooza show was just insane for me, I really enjoyed it.
iR: Yeah I bet, that sounds incredible. If you were asked by someone who was completely unfamiliar with what you did, how would you explain to them the kind of stuff that you do?
GT: It's just a sound collage. It's like a visual collage, just imagine cutting up a bunch of pictures from a magazine and assembling them into a cohesive hole. It's that idea just with pop music.
Girl Talk Live In Pittsburgh
iR: Right. Now i'm sure you get asked this question a lot, but their isn't a very straight answer on the internet or anything. How did you come up with the alias "Girl Talk"?
GT: [Pauses] Umm, it's actually a reference to the uh, the band Chicago. They have a seven inch from their early days, and it's a b-side to one of the singles. It's a jam called Girl Talk and it's one of my favorites.
iR: Hmm, interesting. Where do you hope to see yourself in five, ten years from now?
GT: I don't know. I mean I can honestly say this project has gone to levels I never expected and I'm very excited that this has happened. I have no real goals beyond this. I think I'm gonna make music for a long time, but I'm just trying to make stuff that I think is interesting, regardless of how the public feels, or critics, whatever. That's something I try not to be to overly concerned with. I really don't know. I never expected it to get this far. Where it can go I really have no idea.
iR: Are you currently working on any projects that we can expect to hear from you in the coming months, years?
GT: Probably not, I mean the way I work is just a slow process and right now I'm kinda averaging releasing one album every two years. I can't imagine that changing to much. I would like to get into working on individual songs and putting those out, I think that would be something gratifying. I think when you do one album every two years, you just aren't investing a lot into one project, and it becomes kind of stressful and overwhelming. Which is cool, it's just a lot, so I would love to just make individual songs and put them on the internet just to see what people thing about it. But that's something I haven't really stepped into yet, so I don't know. I can't imagine doing a release this year.
iR: Ok, that's great. I think we're pretty much done, do you have any shout outs or anything you wanna leave the---
GT: Nah man, I think that was cool.
iR: Alright, great. Thanks so much.
GT: Alright man, have a good one.
