girl talk – feed the animals (illegal art)
the other great thing guerrilla label illegal art released last year was girl talk’s feed the animals. mix albums have been around for some time, but greg gillis has taken the mash-up to a whole new level. for one, it’s no longer about how well you can transit from track to track. some of girl talk’s transitions are indeed nice, and very clever, but in other cases, jarring and even distasteful. however, this is precisely the deconstruction of the music that the swollen indie scene needs desperately today. feed the animals violently jumps from one sample to the next, disregarding any rules of dj-ing, cutting across historical eras and profaning all genre boundaries. in its own rude way of cutting and splicing, it forces you to readjust your tastes and rethink the way you listen to music; but its function is not merely cerebral – it’s also a whole lot of fun, which is what mash-up’s are all about in the first place.
2 responses so far ↓
acidmark // January 4, 2009 at 9:55 pm |
one of the best pieces of music crit i lay my eyes on in 2008, incidentally, was about mr girl talk himself: http://www.riffmarket.com/2008/12/theoretically-unpublished-piece-about.html
itallstarted // January 7, 2009 at 9:01 pm |
I was surprised at how much I liked this album. There aren’t many mashups that I like really and so it was with great trepidation that I had a listen when it was released. I loved it! I think it’s that combination of fat beats and familiar tunes that I love, and it all blends together so seamlessly. Pretty clever stuff. I worry about the legality of such a venture though.