Interview with Girl Talk.

Greg Gillis gained national recognition last year under the pseudonym Girl Talk for his unique mash-up compilation, Night Ripper. Though mash-ups are generally considered little more than a novelty, Gillis brought some artistic legitimacy to the table by creatively mixing up to 30 samples into three-minute songs. In anticipation of his forthcoming show here in Charlottesville, the Cavalier Daily recently caught up with Greg to ask him a few questions about his work.

Greg Gillis: Hello?

Ethan: Hey, it’s Ethan again, from the Cavalier Daily.

GG: Hey, how are you doing? Sorry about that. Were you the one who called the other day too?

E: Yeah.

GG: Man, I’m sorry. I normally don’t schedule interviews, and I don’t normally schedule extended tours, so I’ve been a bit busier than expected. I apologize.

E: Well, I’m a really big fan of Girl Talk, so I appreciate you taking the time out to talk with me.

GG: No problem, man.

E: Well, I guess we might as well get started... I heard that you quit your day job as a biomedical engineer. What do you like best about a full time music artist by comparison?

GG: It’s so hard to pinpoint one thing just because the whole lifestyle is so different. I mean, I hate waking up early and I hate going into offices and I hate dealing with people that I want to be friends with on the rise. I enjoyed the engineering aspect, but the whole "job" thing just sucks for a lot of people because you are forced to do a lot of things you don’t want to do. Now, I wake up whenever I want and just do something that I really enjoy, which is make music and hang out with my friends.

E: Well, certainly it’s a very different job. What exactly inspired you to start Girl Talk?

GG: You know, I was always attracted to the music. I think when I was 15 or so I started my first band, and it was more experimental stuff. That's kind of how I got into doing electronic music. Once my high school band was done with, I was 18 and I got my first computer, so I decided to just start doing electronic music. I liked guys like Negativland and people who did sample-based works, so I kind of wanted to get involved in the same things they did.

E: How exactly do you decide what samples go well with each other? Your mixes seem very robust, but at the same time, it seems like it would be a very delicate process.

GG: For me, it's never really intuitive — it’s always very trial-and-error based. I’m always isolating samples and not really worrying about what I’m going to do with them. I have a program, which I perform live on, which is kind of an easy way to match up different samples and time-stretch and things like that. I try out tons of different things. Every show, I change up small little aspects of my songs and after a year or two of experimenting, certain things pop up and start to sound really good. It’s a guessing game for me, and I just spend a lot of time doing it. It’s just whatever sounds good to my ears.

E: Since you use so many samples without permission of the artist, do you ever worry about the legality of what you’re doing?

GG: With my other albums, I was really doing it on an underground level, so I wasn’t that concerned. A lot of people do sample-based works that fly under the radar. I think with the last record, with the attention I got, I had to be a little bit concerned. I don’t feel morally wrong about anything I’m doing. I don’t feel like I’m negatively impacting any artists. I feel like the work is transformative and stands on its own feet. There is a thing called Fair Use in the United States law that allows you to sample without permission if it falls under certain criteria, and I do believe my music should fall within what would be Fair Use. So I worry about it, but at the same time, I feel good about it. It’s not as though I feel that I'm ripping anybody off in any way.

E: Would you consider yourself more of an artist, or more of a DJ? Your music has definitely received its fair share of critical acclaim, but at the same time, most of the people that I’m going to the concert with are just looking to dance. I think your music kind of has that kind of dual appeal to it.

GG: I don’t know if I would pick either, as far as "DJ" or "artist." I’d hate to call myself an artist, because then I just sound like a pretentious dude, you know what I mean? But I would definitely not consider myself a DJ, not in a traditional sense. For me, a DJ is somebody who mixes songs, and there’s a specific art to that. But when I perform live, people don’t come out to hear me play songs — they come out to hear me remix and make new songs out of that. The style that I perform them, I’ve never really seen a DJ perform that way. I’ve seen other sound-collage artists do it, where you get up there and you manipulate samples to make something new, but when I see DJ’s play, even the most creative ones will queue up a track and can step away and let it play out. With me, any change in the music I’m actually doing by hand. Every kick drum, every individual sample is kind of isolated, and I’m actually mixing and matching on the fly. I’d say I’m not a DJ, with a lot of respect towards DJ’s. For me, I’ve always kind of considered myself an electronic music producer that happens to be based in samples.

E: What’s your favorite part of performing?

GG: For me, one thing that’s cool is that I’m always trying out new music, so I get to play it for new people and see how they get down. Making the music is very isolated — I’m sitting in my room for hours working on things, it’s not a very social thing. The shows for me are very big — there’s a huge social part where I like to interact with the crowd. I like to get them on stage, I like to get into the crowd. I’m working for hours and hours and years and years and years. I mean, I like what I’m making, but then I get to get up on stage and see how people get down with it. You get to have fun with that. Really, I just like partying with people.

E: Looking into the future, have you got any ideas for your next album yet? I’m really hoping to hear snippets of songs like [Rihanna's] "Umbrella" and [Justin Timberlake's] "SexyBack".

GG: Like I said before, I really like to preview new material all the time. The way I perform live is that I take out one sample and put in something new. When I’m a performer, I’m showing about 80 percent new material, so I think I have a lot built up for the past year and a half or so. I think I should be able to pump out another album within a year. I think it will be in a similar style to Night Ripper, but I’ve worked on music more this year than any other period of my life, so I think I can put something together that’s a bit more cohesive and tighter than Night Ripper. I think I may have found my niche with that particular style, and I haven’t really heard anyone else view music in that style, so I’m going to try and put out another album before people start jumping on the bandwagon.

E: Just a personal question here. I had heard you were doing a remix of the of Montreal song, "Gronlandic Edit." How’s that going?

GG: It’s good! I was doing it as Girl Talk for a while, and I do remixes with a friend of mine named Frank Musarra under the name "Trey Told 'Em." It was supposed to be a Girl Talk remix, but I was actually having problems with a few parts of it, so Frank and I have been working on it together. It’s just about done now. We’ve actually been out for a couple of weeks, so we’ve been holding off on it, but it won’t be a Girl Talk remix. It’ll be under the title Trey Told 'Em. I’m into it, we disco’d it out a little. There’s not a lot of heavy sample work, but I think it’s cool. I actually think it’s the best remix I’ve done with Frank so far.

E: Awesome, I look forward to hearing it! Thanks again for your time. Do you have any final comments before I let you go?

GG: No, I just want to apologize again for being so busy over the past couple days, I feel like a dickhead. But yeah, it was nice to get to chat.

E: It’s no problem, it was nice to get a hold of you. Thanks a lot for your time, Greg.

GG: Alright, have a good one.

Originally written for the Cavalier Daily:
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/news/2007/sep/20/tableau-chats-with-girl-talk/