Girl Talk / "Feed the Animals"

(Erik attempts a review of a mash-up album with a mash-up review...)

I never know what to say about mash-up records. You can say that Girl Talk was the pioneer of the mash up that helped bring them to a wider audience. Unlike mash-up makers in it to figure out the lamest way to combine two song titles, justify their existence with cheap mp3 blog Diggs, or wind up in a Cobrasnake shot with some Olsen twin look-a-like, Gillis just really likes stuffing tons of his favorite FM moments into bursts of Top 40 overload. But the album is more than just a gimmick: Gillis makes some samples sound like brand-new music with a more complicated message: "The whole basis of the music is that people have these emotional attachments to these songs. Being able to manipulate that is a really easy way to connect with people." What does this mean for "Feed the Animals" though? Feed the Animals is a good record. Though it’s broken up into 14 tracks, it functions best (and as Girl Talk intends) as a single 53-minute mash-up. There are no contradictions here; it’s just like scanning across several radio stations simultaneously, while everything magically synchs up. The real fun of Feed the Animals is the act of recognition, so I won’t say much more, except this—Lil Mama’s “Lip Gloss” over the riff from Metallica’s “One?” The best part? It's available free and/or cheaply at your own discretion. $0 gets you 320kbps MP3s, $5 gets you high quality FLAC files, and $10 gets you a physical copy of the CD. Damn!

In short...

Feed the Animals = NICER DICER!!

Damn, indeed.

Rating: 8.2