my friend jody introduced me to girl talk and i thought it was my duty to pass it along to you.  girl talk, a pseudonym for pittsburgh based mashup un-dj greg gillis, borrows unauthorized, recognizable samples from other musicians and re-contextualizes them into new pieces.

let's back up to better understand his art.  i call him an "un-dj" because he creates his mixes both on-stage and in-studio using computers rather than turntables.  that's not to say his shows aren't highly energetic and fun.  i've read that during his live performers, he's been known to strip down to his underwear and dance around his laptop.  i don't know why he does that, but evidently the crowd loves it.

early in his musical career, girl talk was influenced by japanese noise acts merzbow and the boredoms.  more recently however, through his connection with anti-copyright collective illegal art, he has shifted his focus to sampling copyrighted material and become a sort of christian marclay of the mash-up generation.

there's tons of stuff available on youtube, but most of it doesn't really translate to the internet.  click here for a mini doc/performance recorded at the montreal jazz festival.  click here for an entire set performed in chicago, new year's eve 2007.  to really understand girl talk, click here for a matthew perpetua interview recorded on the program the bryant park project, june 23, 2008.  remember, click the album cover image on the upper right of the screen for more.

if you like what you heard, girl talk's latest album, feed the animals was released exclusively on the internet june 20, 2008.  click here for the official website.  pay what you want for the mp3's. five dollars or more gives you a bonus of all of the tracks linked together in one big file (it's intended to be listened to as a one continuous jam). ten dollars or more gets you an advance order for the physical cd.

there are a few girl talk dates on the horizon, click here to find out if he will be performing near you.

as always, please buy this album from your local independent music store and not from retailers like wal-mart (soulless, globally-homogenizing, community-killers) or i-tunes (albums should be listened to as an entire composition with album cover and liner notes in hand).  incidentally, these two companies sell more music than any other retailer in the united states.  that my friend, bites.