Volume 7, Issue 0
Q&A
seeds. 11
girl talk
Life of the party, Girl Talk, details his experiences behind the laptop An ever-evolving artist Gregg Gillis, better known by his stage moniker Girl Talk, is on the edge of mashups, remixes, and samples. Taking his talents on tour after tour for over ten years, Gillis has seen tame to insane crowds clinging to every beat. Gillis has learned to not only how move his crowds with music, but adding in his own live effects that include leaf blowers and toilet paper, to stir more madness. Pushing innovation is key to the idea of Girl Talk and an ongoing motivation for Gillis. Noting where he has been and where he wants to go, Gillis is determined to set, not only his live shows, but his music apart from anything else that is accessible or otherwise. Gillis took the time to answer some of our questions. Seeds Entertainment: How did you come up with the ideas of leaf blowers to shoot toilet paper and even the simple idea of having the audience dance on stage with you? Gregg Gillis: I would say right now, the show has been a slow evolution. I think a lot of things that exist in the show were small ideas that happened a couple years ago that happened at a few shows that built up and became regular elements for the show. I think in the early days, I’m talking ten years ago, I always wanted to make the show
a production. I always liked the idea of having my show, with me triggering samples from a laptop still be something like a rock show with visuals, and things like that. Back in the early days, I always to have a human element to the show, as opposed to a cold electronic music show with little interference. So I always made a point to get in the crowd, or to invite people on stage, to really get out there and interact with people. And during that era I did a lot of house parties where I would just be set up in the middle of the floor, there was no stage. SE: Have you had any interesting experiences with your interactions with fans? GG: Yeah, you know I think it’s pretty organized now. But I think if you check out any YouTube of the show from 2008, 2009 or even 2007, in that era. It was truly chaos, there was no barricade, and I basically allowed the whole audience to get up there. There were shows where the table of the legs would just snap underneath them, just from the pressure from everyone running up there. I’ve had every level of nudity on stage. I’ve seen people have sex on stage. I’ve had people vomit on, near the computer. It was pretty extreme there for a while. SE: You talk about your show becoming what it is from small ideas. Do you have any small ideas now?
GG: You know, I still feel we're doing some things at each show. There’s always a limitation at what we can do at certain venues, with scale and cost, and all of that. But this year, and were not doing it that often-so I’d hate to even throw it out there, we have incorporated some pyro in the show. I played a show in Pittsburgh on Saturday, that’s where I’m from, so we kind of wanted to make it a big deal. It was actually the most tickets I’ve sold for an individual show. So we wanted to go big with it, so we have actually decided to incorporate some pyro with certain shows. Like raining sparks on stage, and even though that’s not small, that’s the sort of thing where we’ve done it at one show and we go “we can do it at a few more.” So we have done that a couple of times, and that’s the newest thing. SE: What’s your plan after your summer tour? GG: I’m working on a bunch of new music, I would say the set right now, that I’ve been playing around with this summer is almost half new material. The down time I do have, I am always eager to work on music. I have a lot of ideas, that relates to the last record, as far as the materials sounding. I’m also working on some stuff that’s a little bit different than the past few records. This material is stuff that I haven’t
played live, and I don’t think that it could work in that context right now. So I would say that I’m working on some stuff that I would consider outside of the box of the past few years of Girl Talk, and I’m kind of excited to continue to develop that. I would say that shows will slow down after this year, and I would like some sort of release ideally in the next year. Whether its gonna be stuff that relates to the last record, or whether it will be the newer material that I was mentioning. I’m not sure, I’m kind of working on two batches of materials simultaneously. SE: What do you mean by outside the box? GG: This stuff is still sample base, but some of the source material is more obscure. I would say that the way I’m using the source material is different-so just the structure of it. And there is some very famous source material, but maybe the way I’m going about using it is cut up a bit more. It’s kind of taken away from the original context more than the last few releases. It’s further from a traditional mash-up style, compared to my last couple records. So it’s more along the lines of making beats, but it is still sample based. I have a few ideas of where it could go, but at this point I would say that it doesn’t sound like the last couple records. Interview by Gabe Potter
Need more Girl Talk? Read the full interview - DAILYERNEBRASKAN.COM