Girl Talk
Feed the Animals
Rating: 3.5
Label: Illegal Art
If you’ve heard any Girl Talk albums, you know the drill: Mash-ups from here to Timbuktu. Girl Talk’s (DJ Gregg Gillis) fourth “studio” record is an amalgam of bombastic instrumentals and consistently recognizable vocals, running the gamut from nostalgic (The Carpenters’ “Superstar”) to today’s hits (Lil’ Mama’s “Lip Gloss”). The Pittsburgh native took a page out of the Radiohead playbook this time, making his Feed the Animals available to download, but allowing the customer naming the price tag. Unfortunately, that method didn’t play out to the mass media frenzy that the Oxfordshire quintet incited.
There are moments of genius on the album, first of which comes from a track titled “Shut the Club Down,” when an elongated clip from Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” is played over the instrumental from Kanye West’s club smash, “Flashing Lights”. This is only the first of many, though. The album plays on hitting the listener with mashup-after-mashup in an almost relentless manner. Then again, this isn’t really an album used to relax on your subway ride or to be used as background music to write poetry to. This is to be played as loud as possible.
Gillis’ is a wizard as an artist and computer technician. His choice of beats and melodies is excellent. Another testament to the workmanship of Feed the Animals is how every piece of this puzzle wasn’t made to fit together. Some melodies or riffs are sped up or slowed down with added instrumentation to carry what’s being spoken. Case in point: the guitar line from Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” is played under “Roc Boys” by Jay-Z. All of the cuts and breaks are clean and expertly placed–some of them even giving way to some type of lyrical value. Feed the Animals is an unstoppable club mix that is certainly worth the download or purchase
By Cameron Mason
