New stock for Girl Talk

Lovers of copyright infringement, free music, and body-thrashing dance parties unite. Girl Talk is back on the scene with his brand new album, All Day. As the title suggests, listeners will want to hear the songs all day, every day.
If you are not familiar with Girl Talk (known as Gregg Gillis on his birth certificate), please take the opportunity to listen to his music before continuing with this article. An engineer turned DJ, Girl Talk samples seemingly unrelated songs to create new mash-ups. It’s a foolproof method because each song is already popular on its own, making each song an eclectic blend of great music.
Released on Nov. 15, All Day clocks in at 72 minutes of MP3 magic. This album is significantly longer than his previous LPs, Feed the Animals (2008) and Night Ripper (2006). The other new and astonishing difference is that Girl Talk released the entire album for free download from the website of his label, Illegal Art.
Fans were shocked by the DJ’s decision. Their enthusiasm quickly overloaded the servers on Illegal-art.net, prompting the website to list other sources of download.
Second-year arts student Andrew McDonald downloaded the album within a day of its release. “The fact that he simply gave away his album is mind-blowing. It really tells you something about his love for music and how he is just making a pure statement by making no profit on mixing other people’s music; he just loves to do it.”
McDonald supports and admires Girl Talk’s work. “People criticize him for not writing his own music, taking other people’s songs and just mixing them. But you have to understand how crazy-talented you need to be to be able to have the musical vision to piece these songs together.”
All Day is composed of 373 samples, divided into 12 tracks. Illegal Art states that the album is “intended to be listened to as a whole” but was “broken up into individual tracks only for easier navigation.” The samples blend cohesively into one another and create one seamless track. There is not one instance of an awkward transition or an inappropriate mix of sounds. Cliché as it may be, the whole exceeds the sum of it parts.
Girl Talk kept with the trend he began with Feed the Animals in sampling and mashing contemporary beats with classic hits. The truly astonishing moments of the album come from these mash-ups. Opening Track Oh No mixes Black Sabbath’s War Pigs with Jay Z and Ludacris. And who would ever have thought that Simon and Garfunkel would be singing backup for Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz (Track 5, This is the Remix)?
As usual, All Day has not escaped controversy. The constant debate of the legality of mash-up artists rages on. However, times have changed, and the past decade has seen the emergence of a new genre of music. Love it or hate it, Girl Talk and his sick beats are not going anywhere soon.