Girl Talk Night Ripper CD

The high-minded conceptual tropes of the original plunderphonic artists, John Oswald and Negativland, were not exactly anyone's idea of party music--pointed and often humorous cultural critique, but generally not something one could dance to. The post-Napster Internet-era of accelerated consumption has ushered in a new generation of pop-culture recyclers. These young laptop jockeys are as hell-bent on filling dance floors as they are on smashing commonplace genre banalities. Gregg Gillis (Girl Talk) is the sampledelic wunderkind behind NIGHT RIPPER, a rollicking 40-minute ride through hundreds of musical fragments, from (seemingly) as many different music styles.
NIGHT RIPPER could easily have come across as a novelty record, but Gillis is no ordinary bedroom DJ-cum-producer. Abolishing the classic mash-up formula of vocal a capella over instrumental tracks, Gillis freely mixes snippets from a dizzying array of '80s pop, classic rock, grunge, Dirty South rap, and even Bollywood banghra beats. On the track "Bounce That," Gillis lays down a Ludacris rap over Elastica's "Connection" (itself an appropriation of Wire's "Three Girl Rhumba") in one of the album's stranger moments. Seamlessly mixed--as if by a highly skilled, attention-deficit-addled DJ--NIGHT RIPPER is a joyous, schizophrenic, and highly entertaining mess.
Gregg Gillis has been cutting up and gluing bits and pieces of songs together as a DJ in Pittsburgh since his 2002 debut, Secret Diary, an album that, though a lot of easily identifiable samples (the Price Is Right theme, for example) were used, was so delayed and skipped and glitched that it was too obfuscated to do much in the mainstream. Such is not the case with Night Ripper, however, which, thanks to Gillis's ability to draw from a myriad of musical sources (the names of the artists used, though not their songs, are listed in alphabetical order inside the liner notes, and in fact make up the entirety of the liner notes), can appeal to anyone who's heard the radio (particularly rap radio) in the past few years. Because of the recognizability of the pieces used, Night Ripper is a good tool for showing listeners unfamiliar with the art of sampling what a talented DJ can actually do; Gillis' favorite trick on the album is to play a long vocal track, preferably something from the Ying Yang Twins or Ludacris, over rock (be it classic, indie, or grunge) beats, which he speeds up or slows down as necessary. It's pretty impressive, and at first listen, it's pretty fun. On the opener, "Once Again," Luda's "Pimpin' All Over the World" moves into the Twins' "Wait (The Whisper Song)" over the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony," which then turns into Slim Thug's "I Ain't Heard of That" plus the acoustic guitar of Oasis's "Wonderwall," all of which ends with the Five Stairsteps' oft-sampled "O-o-h Child." Actually, "ends" is not really the right term, as the whole album works as one piece, the track titles only serving to help those more song-inclined not feel as if they are in foreign electronica territory, with its 50-minute sides and incomprehensible blips and bleeps. The thing is, this openness to pop culture, while it may increase and amuse his audience, also serves to make the album a fleeting affair. How many times do you really want to hear Fleetwood Mac's "Little Lies" trade off with the 69 Boyz's "Tootsie Roll?" Or Sophie B. Hawkins mix with Panjabi MC and Better Than Ezra while the Game's vocals from "Hate It or Love It" play over? The very thing that makes Night Ripper entertaining, its basis on current hits and long pop-song breaks, is also the thing that kills it, that makes it lose its appeal after a few spins; good for one party, one car trip, one afternoon at the beach, and that's all. Which isn't to say, however, that that one hour can't be a whole lot of fun. ~ Marisa BrownRolling Stone (p.105) - Ranked #22 in Rolling Stone's "The Top 50 Albums Of 2006" -- "[A] virtuoso mash-up record....Coherent and sublime..."
Spin (p.58) - Ranked #27 in Spin's "The 40 Best Albums of 2006" -- "Greg Gillis turns our band-of-the-day age on its head, splicing hundreds of Top 40 gems into samples..."
Uncut (p.87) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[L]ike Kid606 rewiring Jive Bunny, via Fleetwood Mac, MIA, Pixies, Nirvana and Wings: the perfect party mixtape."
Q (Magazine) (p.107) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "Pennsylvania laptop whizzkid Gregg Gillis takes DJ mash-ups to a new level."
Q (Magazine) (p.104) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "His debut album is a blizzard of samples that collides rock, techno and hip hop to brilliant effect..."
Clash (magazine) (p.112) - "[S]eamlessly grabbing beats, lyrics and hooks for a variety of sources and doing something very new and exciting with them."