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Monday, May 2, 2011

Mash Up Monday - Girl Talk's 'All Day'

With everything going on, I haven't had a chance to listen to a full CD in months.  I finally got smart, and burned a few albums of MP3s onto a disc to take along with us in the car this last week.  One of those albums was Girl Talk's November release, 'All Day'.

For those of you that aren't familiar with Girl Talk, he has become the godfather of mashups.  His first album, 'Secret Diary', came out all the way back in 2002.  It's hard to describe his style.  It's unlike anyone else that I have featured on my blog.  He's like a mashup DJ on meth.  I usually tell people, "If you don't like what you're listening to, wait 20 seconds".  His latest album only has 12 tracks, but has samples from 373 songs.  That is an average of 31 samples per track, or a new sample every 11.42 seconds.

I featured the first track on the album, 'Oh No', back in January.  Now that I've had a chance to listen to the rest of the album, let me play a couple more tracks that I really enjoy.

Track three, entitled 'That's Right', contains at least 15 samples, from what I can count.  It includes everything from Peter Gabriel's 'In Your Eyes', to Nine Inch Nails' 'Closer', to, believe it or not, Miley Cyrus' 'Party in the U.S.A.'.

**It does contain adult language, and is NSFW**


Track four on the album, called 'Jump On Stage', has samples from more than 18 or 19 songs.  On this one, it  carries three main background tracks, Portishead's 'Sour Times', Radiohead's 'Creep', and T'Pau's 'Heart And Soul'.  It flows seamlessly.  It's flawless.

**This contains adult language too, and is NSFW**


The New York Times once called Girl Talk "a lawsuit waiting to happen".  Seeing as he has nearly 400 samples on this album that he has not been granted permission to use, he is not legally allowed to sell this album.  He is, however, allowed to give it away for free under the "fair use" clause of copyright law.

You can go to Girl Talk's website, and download 'All Day', either as a 12 track album, or as one continuous track.  It is easily the most impressive piece of work I have heard in quite a long time.  So impressive, in fact, that on Friday, I listened to it four times in a row.  Back to back.

I haven't done that to ANY CD in probably a decade or more.

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