Nashville gets a dose of ‘Girl Talk’

When Gregg “Girl Talk” Gillis mixes a song out of manipulated pop samples, he means business. Girl Talk’s latest album, “Feed the Animals” manages to squeeze 300 samples into 53 minutes, producing unlikely pairings like Radiohead and Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes and Rick Derringer and even MC Hammer with Nine Inch Nails. In one song alone, Girl Talk uses 35 samples ranging from Phil Collins and The Cure to 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes.

Thanks to a quickly increasing cult fan base and tricky maneuvering of United States fair use laws, Girl Talk has put out four albums and sold out traditional music venues across the nation. On his latest tour, the laptop-wielding walking dance party Gillis will appear in Nashville alongside openers CX KiDTRONiK and The Death Set at the long sold-out Cannery Ballroom.

Before Girl Talk descends upon Nashville for the first time since his 2007 Bonnaroo appearance, he explains what he does, how he does it and how he feels about performing music that some believe is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Belmont Vision: When you had a real job and you were doing this gig on the side, did you expect it to blow up as much as it has?

Gregg Gillis: No, not at all. I was functioning within a very specific underground scene and even two or three years ago, I thought I was potentially at the peak of what this project could do. Back then, touring around, playing at band oriented venues with a laptop doing pop remixes, in my mind there’s only so far you can go. Being able to draw 15 or 20 people in each city was fine, that was like a success.

When it started taking off, it was extremely crazy and weird for me, especially because of the lack of a precedent for this sort of thing. I know other laptop artists and electronic musicians have played shows this big but as far as doing live sound collage on a computer, there’s definitely other people doing that but there was no hero to look up to that was selling out shows or anything like that.

Vision: Are you considered a hero in this underground scene now?

Gillis: [laughs] Probably not. I mean, it’s very minor. Once it got to this point, I’m now isolated from it. I think a lot of the people who I used to play with or collaborate with or play shows—other laptop artists—probably don’t even view me as in the same world of music anymore. I always kinda felt like an outcast even within that smaller laptop community just because I was going for something more pop based than a lot of my contemporaries. It was definitely a tangent of that underground specific scene, but I don’t know how any of those people feel about what’s going on. They probably think it’s funny like I do.

Vision: Whenever I try to explain Girl Talk who have heard your music, usually I’m at kind of loss for words. How do you describe what you do?

Gillis: When I’m talking to my aunts and uncles or grandparents, I kinda describe it as just a big sound collage, the same way you would imagine a visual collage—cutting up lots of elements, recontextualizing them and putting them into new places—that’s basically what I do with music. A lot of stuff from the past 60 to 75 years of pop, all scrambled together in a very frantic pace, but still cohesive. Very much so focused around hip-hop vocals.

Vision: The amount of music that goes into a single track is a little bewildering. At this point, can you listen to music without the voice in the back of your head contemplating how it might fit into something you’re working on?

Gillis: I can kind of get in and out of the mode of listening for samples. I think there’s not many restraints on this project, but I do try to work within the top 40 world. So, ideally my source materials are pop songs people have heard on the radio or are familiar with and then I like to go and do new things with them. Often times, I’m listening to an album when there’s non-singles playing or I’m listening to music that might not be radio music. Often times, then I can completely ignore looking for samples or hunting it down. I can get in and out of that.

Vision: is there something about the average pop song that lends itself so well to sampling?

Gillis: I just think it’s a very powerful tool to have a melody or vocal refrain or something that people recognize and have emotional connections to and have some sort of nostalgic bond with. To be able to manipulate and play with it and make something new out of it, you’re kinda manipulating and playing with peoples’ memories of that song. That’s what I really like, that’s how I grew up listening to hip-hop and more of the more experimental laptop stuff. I was always just excited at people taking these seemingly untouchable characters and doing whatever they wanted with them. And that’s what it’s like. Remixing pop music is like playing with imaginary dolls of pop figures, then killing them and ripping their arms off and piecing them back together into a new form.

Vision: How much do you think your music benefits from familiarity? Does it get the same kind of response from people who aren’t well-versed in American pop music?

Gillis: Yeah, it changes. I think there’s different levels of appeal for the music. I know like when I play a show, a lot of times there’s a younger fanbase who might not necessarily be listening to a lot of music from the 60s and 70s. They might not recognize a specific riff from Boston when I drop it. I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary, but ideally… I think sometimes people even hear a melody that they know and they’re not necessarily waiting to hear that song, they’re more or less listening to how it’s going to be manipulated. I think even when I was listening to Public Enemy or something as a kid growing up… you couldn’t tell where the source material was from or even a lot of the James Brown sampling in the late 80s, early 90s hip-hop and I hadn’t really listened to James Brown at that point, but it didn’t really matter. You could tell that they were manipulating some source material and that was kind of the appealing aspect of it.

I think some people really like coming out to shows that recognize the samples and like the pop music and that’s what they’re going after and other people kind of are more interested in what I’m going to do with it. They might not really follow pop and might not know half of the things I drop during a show or an album, but they like the style that I rework things in.

Vision: Do you have a specific process you go through when you’re trying to come up with a new song, is it simply trial and error?

Gillis: Yeah, it’s very trial and error. I basically will just sit down for any song, something which I’m manipulating—a melody or a drum breakdown or if we turned on the radio right now, I’m sure we could find a song that would have an interesting part that we could potentially sample. Then I just isolate those loops, quantize them and chop things up. From there, I don’t really concern myself with what I’m going to do with it, I just catalog it basically. I’ll go and sample the melody and just save it and I’ll make note of the tempo and I’ll store that in my mind. When I’m preparing new material for a live show, there might be a part of this show that I want to change up or do something new with and then I’ll try to introduce that new melody and I’ll see what vocals go with it. Something might click and I’ll say, “Ok, well I’ll play that in during a live show,” then depending on how it goes over there and the response from the audience helps go into influence how I’m going to manipulate it. So I’m going to need to make a new beat or add new vocals or chop it up more, speed it up, slow it down, whatever. After playing shows, basically every weekend the music evolves over time. Certain things stay in the set and other things get played once and from there, that’s my songwriting process. When I sit down to do an album, it’s almost documenting my favorite material from the past two years with the live shows.

Vision: What transformation goes on when you take the stuff you were doing in the live show and put it on the album?

Gillis: A lot of times with the live show, I’m a bit looser with the way I work the source material. For one, because I can’t really edit live at the speed I do on record and also because I think a lot of times with shows I’m going for a more party atmosphere whereas on the record I want to put together a meticulous piece of work that you might be able to party to, but more or less I want it to be something you can piece apart, sitting down by yourself with headphones and just really get into on that level. So, on the live setting, a lot of the time the transitions will be just a bit more loose style and a lot of times I will just be more freeform about the way I use the samples. I might be playing a beat and a vocal and have a melody I want to introduce, I might play 16 bars of a rap verse and then start it over and then introduce the melody. On record, I would never really do anything like that. I think in the live setting it’s just kind of a raw interpretation of these ideas and then when I sit down to finalize it on the record, it’s kind of just coming up with very specific transitions and just a lot of subtle aspects to the production is what I focus on.

I’m trying to think of a good way to articulate it, but basically the live setting is a very loose, raw version and I want to kind of fine tune it on record.

Vision: Speaking of records, a couple of years back you did an interview with Pitchfork and seemed to indicate that an internet release might not be taken as seriously as one you can buy in a store. Has the release of Feed the Animals changed that perspective?

Gillis: Absolutely, I think there’s been some major changes in the past two years and I think when I said that I was fully aware that eventually we will get to the point where an internet release is completely legitimate. For me the big thing was Radiohead doing the “pay what you want” with In Rainbows and they released that digitally immediately after it was finished. It was online and reviews were running and every magazine was covering it basically before a physical CD existed. That really legitimized it in my mind and that’s why we went about the releasing the new album in the way we did where it was a pay what you want, internet only first.

But I still feel like… I don’t know. I probably live in a different world than most music consumers. I like buying CDs and I still think it’s a legitimate thing to have a CD out and it kind of makes people take your product a bit more seriously. But I’m probably off on that. I think a lot of people who listen to music couldn’t care less if your album is on CD or not and digital is the true format for them. But, I’m honestly a bit dated in the way I consume music, probably.

Vision: I don’t know if it’s dated. From the perspective of someone living in Nashville, there are a lot of people who love buying physical copies. Record stores are thriving here and so, incidentally, is the vinyl pressing plant.

Gillis: That’s good, that’s where I’m at and that’s where a lot of my friends are at. But it’s just a weird time to be on that level just because a lot of people growing up have no idea of going to a record store. That’s not even within their world.

Vision: But there’s also going to be a physical release for the album, right?

Gillis: Yeah, it’s out right now. I think the official release date is November 11, but it exists and I have physical copies on me right now.

Vision: What’s the advantage of a digital release over this traditional model?

Gillis: For me it was just a matter of timing and I’ve always been really curious just to see how far this project could spread. In the early days I always would put my stuff on Napster, burn a bunch of CDs, give it out to everyone I can. I still do that. So, I wanted to get it out there as soon as possible as many people as possible, so it seemed like doing the “pay for what you want” model and releasing it online was an easy way to open it up to new people who might not hear it. I think there’s a lot of people who went and downloaded it for free, checked it out. People who just heard it in passing or didn’t like my previous works or for whatever reason didn’t feel really inclined to pick anything up in the past. But now it’s free and it’s available and it’s on the internet right now, why not go for it? I was just trying to acknowledge the reality of how I see people buy music right now.

Vision: Where do you see the music industry going as far as release formats go?

Gillis: I don’t know. I’m gonna buy CDs until they stop making them, but I could see it dying out at some point, which is sad for me as a fan of buying physical products but at the same time it’s exciting. I’m looking forward to any major change, any kind of breakdown in the industry. It seems like people on the internet are always a few steps ahead and it’s just becoming easier and easier to get music and it’s becoming more widespread. It’s just the norm now, even compared to five years ago. So yeah, in maybe 10 years down the line there will be no more physical pressings. But, sure in the music underground it will always exist, but as far as major releases it could completely die out. Which sucks, but is also awesome.

Vision: It’s interesting to see what bands will come up with sometimes, like the most recent Portishead album, they put it out in that box set with a couple vinyl LPs and that USB drive and I think Trent Reznor did the same thing with the last Nine Inch Nails album. It seems like a lot of bands are moving towards putting out digital music but with a physical container for it.

Gillis: Yeah, it’s a very funny area. Everyone’s trying to come up with a solution. Everyone’s trying to figure out what’s going to make people get into this. I think everyone sees the value of digital music and how cool it is to be able to access anything immediately. But, yeah, people are trying to bridge the gap or meet somewhere in between, being able to have your music exist online but also sell it.

Vision: I’m sure something about the legal aspect of what you’re doing comes up whenever you do one of these interviews, but it is a concern, isn’t it?

Gillis: Sure, it’s something that exists. I believe that my artwork should qualify under fair use in the United States copyright law. It’s something that the label and I feel the same way about and I am just trying to make transformative music and I feel like you can’t make any music without influence. It has to be based on something and I don’t see there being any crime involved if you’re physically manipulating something that exists as opposed to recontextualizing an idea.

Vision: Have you had to become somewhat of an expert on fair use after breaking through?

Gillis: Yeah. I don’t know if I’m an expert by any means, but I’ve definitely been schooled a bit more in the past few years, especially just doing interviews. I’m just continually pushing forward and asking about it. I think when I started this, I felt a certain way about copyright as a very broad opinion and then this whole process, the success of the past couple of albums helped me understand the situation better.

Vision: The last couple of albums have really put you out in the forefront. If a record label decided they weren’t down with what you were doing, it would be kind of a landmark case for fair use and music goes. Is it weird to have something like that possibly on the horizon?

Gillis: Yeah! I mean, absolutely, especially again going back to how the project started and what the early days were like. Simultaneously, I feel like a lot of my contemporaries and people I looked up to getting started in this, I saw them breaking through with huge cases as well. Even like the 2 Live Crews and the Negativelands, I’ve seen the history of this. It’s exciting to be a part of that, I feel like we’re moving into a really interesting era, especially with everyone getting very familiar with how to remix songs or visuals, images, movies, whatever. Everyone’s used to remixing ideas on the internet. So, I’m very happy to be a part of anything, because I feel like we’re moving forward into understand sharing ideas in a new way.