Just a couple of things before we really get started:1. Posts will be a little shorter this week due to exam week. I would apologize, but I' m assuming most people will enjoy the brevity.
2. We're kicking off DANCE WEEK!! That's right, today-Sunday, every album will have a significant electronic element to it. If that's not your style... well, it should be.
Alright, on to Night Ripper, which maybe technically isn't dance (unless you have ADD/schizophrenia and the fastest feet known to man) OR electronic. Girl Talk, the stage name for Pittsburgh native Greg Gillis, is a mash-up DJ. And while some may not consider his ability to mix, match, and mash song excerpts together into a seamless string of audio one-liners and "I can't believe he just did that!" moments artistic, it sure is a lot of fun. At the time of this album, Gillis was still pulling his Batman-esque "biomedical engineer by day, DJ by night" routine (he has since left his job as an engineer), and if you're to believe him, his co-workers had no idea that he would finish work, fly to Miami for a club show, then fly back and be at his desk by 9AM the next day. Unbelievable, and yet the story of his dual life is only half as interesting as the music he's putting together.
Night Ripper has served two purposes for a hip-hop-illiterate like myself... as both an endlessly enjoyable example of what you can do with a little computer software (and a LOT of patience/caffeine) and an index of popular music to begin my exposure to the world of Top 40. While many DJs are content to simply combine two songs for the sake of a funny song title, Gillis layers his layers with more layers. To describe all of the twists and turns that happen during Night Ripper would be an injustice, partially because I don't have the ability to do it, but also because it's unlikely that people will respond similary to each of the samples. For example, I can't get over the combo of Phantom Planet's "California" and Clipse's "Grindin" at the end "Too Deep," or the "Say It Ain't So"/"Laffy Taffy"/"Oh I Think They Like Me" trifecta at the transition of "Hold Up" and "Too Deep." You can spend hours listening to this album while browsing the album's Wikipedia page... trying to determine if you actually hear all the samples, and if those tireless Wiki editors missed something. Girl Talk's new album, Feed The Animals (which you can name your own price for) is just as fun and enjoyable, and if we're lucky, Johnny Law will continue letting the likely-illegal practice of cutting and pasting other musicians' work into something completely original and exciting.
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