Girl Talk's Smooth and Grimy Grooves

Plug it in and play it. That is the trick for Girl Talk, the “Mad Scientist Mix Master.” Like Dr. Frankenstein, Girl Talk takes powerful patches and pieces them together into a creature ready for dancing. The songs push the outer reaches of many genres’ boundaries. “Hardcore Electronic Fusion,” is the one way to describe such thought provoking and dance inducing mixes. “Give Me A Beat,” “Hands In the Air,” “In Step,” and “Shut the Club Down” are each titles that announce their dance content. No matter what the title, each song is carried with a fusion of up-tempo and hard hitting drum sequences. On top of the drums, Girl Talk creates magic with a mash-up of music samples from a wide variety of artists that come from a wide ranging period of time. The samples are uncommon enough to leave the listeners refreshed while famous enough to keep the dance floor moving. Listening through each song is like fishing, only with the insurance of catching a whopper of a sample that you just cannot get enough of. Such sample craze can inspire the listener to do some record digging of their own in an effort to hear the song from which such an awesome sample was acquired. However, some of the clips used are only fractions of a second long with a song origin nearly impossible to place for anyone other than the man who is Girl Talk, Greg Gillis. These short clips are what help the continuity of such a jigsaw mix. Where do all of these clips come from? According to an NPR interview, Girl Talk describes using a sound clip library he creates with hours of dutiful music listening and clip extracting, and it is from this point that trial and error begins. Eventually, the kinks are banged out into a forged sound that can be called original. "Smoothness," is what Girl Talk says is his measure of success for each song and album. This successful smoothness contributes in creating a hardcore genre that is more accessible with its full and fast make-up. The lyrics range from pop, rock, and soul, to the various styles of hip hop, especially gangster/southern-club. In between these medleys is a constant stream of guitar and/or synthesizer riffs that make sure each song stays miles from silence. Girl Talk’s progressive step into “Hardcore Electronic Fusion” creates a creative wake for other artists to rise into the chasms of potential still existing within the music world.