Allan’s World of Music

With the Radiohead-style release of Feed The Animals this was my first opportunity to check out Girl Talk. I’ve heard about his work and saw an Of Montreal remix but otherwise it was just one of those I just didn’t bother with.

The main reason I checked out this album was in fact due to the strategy of accepting any amount for the album. With all the surrounding hype around the album, why wouldn’t you check it out?

Girl Talk’s music strategy is simple take music samples from a million different tracks to create new songs. All these songs are usually recognizable pop songs to make one “epic” dance song. Epic depending on your tastes and I can see this being a hit or a miss for someone else.

One of the more fun things to do while listening to this album, is doing the test of how many songs you recognize. I personally recognized most (err if you count half as “most”) as there were ton of those guilty pleasures used like Len’s Steal My Sunshine, The Cardigan’s Lovefool to recent guilty pleasures if Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend or Kelly Clarkson was your secret thing.

The most endearing quality is that while a lot of songs that I end up hating (mainly due to annoyance) work incredibly well in these songs. As well as the mesh between hip-hop rock is done incredibly well. Check out Jay-Z’s rap over Radiohead’s Paranoid Android riff on Set It Off (some very cool stuff).

I personally enjoyed this music very well. However it’s really hard to define other then putting mixing and sampling tons of music what make’s this so great. It’s mixed well etc but I can see many really hating this and I’d personally have trouble saying one certain song is better then the rest as it’s more of a personal aspect of which tracks you once liked.

There is that argument that sampling isn’t that great and it’s not of his own stuff. I think that one is fair but I also understand that sampling and mixing tracks together is one ridiculously strenuous process (I’ve tried to it as well but scrapped it after just getting a beginning of a track lol).

There is also the fact that people may get tired of Girl Talk’s novelty as he hasn’t changed the strategy of his mixing like his past albums. It’s unlikely that if you disliked his previous efforts I won’t see how this effort will do anything else for you.

Rating: 4.5 I still like it a lot I guess even though I know others may not. It’s something that I can probably show my friends as I know they’ll like it.

Set it Off by Girl Talk

No Pause by Girl Talk

Hands in the Air by Girl Talk

Buy the album at Illegal Art

3 Comments for “Girl Talk - Feed The Animals Review”

1. riley — June 29, 2008 @ 3:23 am
   
   

   the mp3’s arent working when i click on them to play with itunes…. any reason or options?

2. Allan — June 29, 2008 @ 4:11 am
   
   

   Does it not work after you download them to your hard-drive?

   I’ll try to get this problem solved….

3. Anonymous — July 12, 2008 @ 2:43 pm
   
   

   this album is very different than his other albums. the songs are cut/ripped apart and put back together much smoother with better transitions. and there are parts where the hype leading to the next mash-up of samples is perfect (grandmaster flash & young gunz) (eminem & yael niam) (salt-n-pepa & nirvana) (m.i.a & cranberries) (kelly clarkson & NIN & mc hammer) (chris brown & rick springfield) (huey & journey). each track is also more individualistic than on his previous albums. it’s clearly a work of pure art. and the whole thing that it’s not his own stuff is utter crap. the samples are just scraps when gillis uses them and they’re put together and timed perfectly to make a wonderful collage.

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