MOG

 Giving away things for free is awesome, especially when you yourself make your music for free. Such is the case for Pittsburgh's very own Greg Gillis, who's better known to the world as Girl Talk. Gillis is the name when it comes to mash-ups in the modern era. With Feed the Animals, his fourth full-length on Illegal Art, his marketing seems more important.

  Resembling more of the method offered by Trent Reznor and the release of the last Saul Williams (and NIN) albums, Illegal Art and GT offered the album for free, five dollars, or ten dollars (or more). Nothing got you 320kbps mp3 files, five bucks got you the FLAC, and ten bucks plus 3 dollars shipping got you the cd. I decided on nothing, because I couldn't afford more of it, and I'm just going to burn this to a CD later anyhow. Girl Talk was a name before this, but deliberately releasing his album in this method definitely gave him more attention. While Gillis is no Thom Yorke, his album has made noise among the music community, at least. That all said, is it good?

    The formula is simple: take well-known mainstream rap songs (most that fit easily into the rhythmic hits format I was raised on) set them against pop or indie songs some might not get. Instantly, there's an accessible album for everyone. Instantly, anyone can realize that this is a noveltly disc, not the newest Sigur Ros in terms of high art. Gillis is good at what he does, no doubt.

      Feed the Animals starts off with a mix of "Gimme Some Lovin'" and "International Player's Anthem (I Choose You)", gving the idea that yep, you're going to hear interesting stuff like that. What you get is more mix fun, with a few highlights here-and-there. Gillis does just enough to make it work, barely trying to speed up anything or make it glitchtastic. A great example of this is the simple use of having Jonny Greenwood's menacing guitar from "Paranoid Android" serve as the background to Jay's smooth swagger on the first verse "Roc Boys" in the song "Set it Off".   While having the two most respected icons of their respective genres go against each other makes sense, the rest of the album is a grab bag. "Tell Me When to Go" against "I Want You to Want Me", alrightm then. Gillis did make one fantastic improvement-urgency of modernity.

   We get to learn that he watches TV, as he includes Yael Naim's "New Soul", the song that sounds like Feist but isn't Feist from that MacBook Air commercial, as the background to a verse from Eminem (speaking of, what happened to Marshall Mathers? At this point he's gonna have an album out at the same time as Detox).  Where Gillis succeeds in being ultracurrent, though, is with the hip-hop samples. "Love in this Club" and "Lollipop", arguably this year's biggest singles, make appearances. Also showing up to the party are Timbaland, Timberlake and Madonna with "4 Minutes" (thankfully not in the album for that long), and my favorite sample, "Gold and a Pager" by the Cool Kids.

   Recognition of the contemporary sound is one thing, but it's only going to last so long. This is the mix you were too lazy or too uninformed to make, the mix you give to your friend who loves music but has never heard of Radiohead or something. For the price, it's right. Is it the end-all, be-all of 2008? Of course not. Is it fun to listen to, as background music? Yeah, sure is.

Condensed: Girl Talk gives away album for free, has more current singles, fun to listen to, good for the summer. RIYL: Steinski. dj/rupture, WNVZ-FM 104.5