All Day
Girl Talk
All Day
On the opening track of Gregg "Girl Talk" Gillis' new record, All Day, he samples nine songs I dearly love - Jay-Z's "99 Problems," The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop," Shuggie Otis' "Strawberry Letter 23," MIA's "Paper Planes," Jane's Addiciton's "Jane Says," Slick Rick's "La Di Da Di" and so on. Pretty obvious stuff. And damn, I know this is what the kids stay up all night flirting with each other to these days, but it kinda works, especially if you're a music fan with a deep collection. By simply piecing different elements of the song out, finding BPMs that work together and cleverly cutting everything together, Gillis puts together a track, titled "Oh No," that in just three or four minutes highlights almost everything I love about pop music. He adds slight dance beats and makes all the songs run together into one schizophrenic piece of music. Then he does it all over again on the 12-track album, all coming together as one of the most masterful and inventive products from the DJ world you'll hear in 2010.
And sure, Gillis has done this all before, four other times, to be exact. His 2006 record, Night Ripper, made him a buzz name and his 2008 record, Feed the Animals, made him an indie sensation. With All Day, which is currently available as a free download, Gillis aims to become a household name, seemingly saving all the best samples ever for this record. Or I could be wrong. Maybe it just so happens that Gillis just happened to be into a lot of the records I like when be put All Day together. Sure, it could be a coincidence … but I doubt it. As good as Feed the Animals was, All Day is Girl Talk's all-out record, the one that might matter.
Gillis, who refers to himself as "a man playing with a laptop," is pretty brilliant at what he does. And while it does seem like he should have his pants sued off, he seems to have that covered too, often reminding listeners, writers and labels that he works under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License, staying that the license allows him permission to make certain uses of the work of others - so as long as he never does so for commercial purposes. So, in other words, All Day is available at no cost for a reason. (Those Girl Talk t-shirts and concert tickets, on the other hand, are a grey area.)
I could go on and on about the ethics of what Gillis does, probably making an easy case for a lawsuit, as Gillis does make his living off of Girl Talk work, but why bother? These mix records are often brilliant fun. Without Gillis, I likely never would've had the pleasure of hearing Big Boi rap over Portishead's "Sour Times," let alone Ol' Dirty Bastard on top of the guitars from Radiohead's "Creep." Now only if I could find a website to tell me all the samples I don't know. But no, nevermind, that might just take the piss out of my headphones.
All Day, like Animals, will be a much-listened-to, much loved recording that will pop up on a huge number of end of the year lists. Not mine, but probably everyone else's. To me, this is a brilliant DJ set from one hell of a hard working tastemaker. To consider it as its own piece of pop art is one thing; to rank it among records full of completely original creations is another. All that said, good luck finding a better party starter in 2010, ethics be damned. 7.5/10
