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Review: Girl Talk at Emo’s
Think of popular recorded music as a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal. About a three-to-one ratio of those mealy oat bits to sugar-loaded marshmallow pieces, which seems to be about the same rate that bona fide thrilling musical hooks emerge out of mostly nondescript sonic gunk.
Therein lies the fuel behind the rise of DJ superstar Girl Talk (nee Greg Gillis); he knows the marshmallows are all that matter on the dance floor.
They were flying left and right Monday night when Gillis took to his laptop on the stage at Emo’s and set to his musical alchemy, creating a bizarro world where samples of tracks by Sinead O’Connor, Lil Wayne, UGK and Rage Against The Machine not only coexist, but dare you not to dance feverishly.
Gillis has said in reports that each minute of his records take about a day’s worth of tinkering and mixing to produce, with his live shows serving as a sort of test tube where he can judge what combinations will and won’t work on record. Judging by Monday’s show, he isn’t cooking up a whole lot of new stuff since his set consisted of lots of familiar moments (with slight tweaks) from his breakout albums, 2006’s “Night Ripper” and the new “Feed The Animals.”
And it worked since fans got to hear thrilling pairings like Avril Lavigne and Toni Basil double teaming T-Pain, or Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy” underlined with Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” at ear-shattering volume.
That last pairing is pretty much Gillis’ “Stairway To Heaven” (which shockingly he’s never sampled. Yet.), a signature moment that’s at the top of fans’ lists when pondering his body of work. It was among the highest peaks he reached during his respectable but still kinda brief 90 minute set Monday, though it wasn’t like too many in attendance were complaining as they left, dazed, sweaty and nearly sugar-shocked from all those marshmallows that got tossed their way.
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By calley
August 10, 2009 1:45 PM | Link to this
i am emo and loveing it