Popcorn Youth: Have you ever found that playing shows in smaller towns, you get a different kind of audience? Or are you expecting a similar turnout?
Gregg Gillis: I would say that it’s been pretty random, but in small towns, people seem to be pretty enthusiastic. In my own personal experience, I really enjoy smaller cities. A lot of times people are just, you know, kind of weird, so if you’re not a traditional band, and if you’re not in New York or LA or whatever, you can get people really excited just to see some really weird shit come through their town. So yeah that’s been cool, we’ve just been playing shows all over, like in dance clubs, art venues, rock clubs and it’s been pretty unpredictable as of late.
Popcorn Youth: For you, what’s your favorite kind of audience? The perfect kind of crowd to perform in front of?
Gregg Gillis: It varies, it’s all over the place. Honestly, I really like playing in smaller cities. ‘Cause sometimes I could play in a dance club, which I’ve done, and it’s cool and it’s awesome to see hundreds of people dancing to your music and stuff, but I like it to be a concert experience so I can interact with the audience and everything. House parties have actually been absolutely insane and great, but at the same time it’s less interaction with the audience. My favorite shows personally are the shows where it’s set like a concert, people watching you and know what’s going on, but at the same time, I like it when the concert kind of erupts in a dance party sort of thing. So I would say the best is when you really reach a hybrid between a dance club and a concert.
Popcorn Youth: When you perform live, how much of the music can be spontaneous or improvisational? Because the music itself is so precise and ordered. How much of the live performance has to be behind the tables, or behind your laptop?
Gregg Gillis: Everything I do live is completely on the fly. My last album Night Ripper kind of sounded like it was based on a kind of trial and error live show but live I have a whole bunch of loops and beats and parts lined up that fit together, and I compose it all beforehand, because I don’t like to improvise, it’s a composed thing. But at the same time, there’s a lot of room to jump around, and if you have way too much material, you’ll never get through it all in a set, so depending on the crowd and the sound system, I can actually improvise, and I do that a little bit. But before every single show I try to make it different, especially because a lot of people come out to multiple shows during the year. So I sit down and I have arranged all these different loops and try to throw in new material, I just try to come up with these new, roughly, songs more or less, and just how I’m going to get through them. But whenever I get up there live, it’s on the fly, so if I step away from the laptop to run around in the crowd for a minute, you’re going to hear the same thing over and over and over for one minute.
Popcorn Youth: (Laughs) So, technically, what systems do you use?
Gregg Gillis: Yeah, I only use computer programs, it’s all I’ve ever used. I’ve never considered myself a DJ, I’ve never used turntables or CDs, I’ve always kind of considered myself a producer, making computer music, and this is kind of how it is live, and also how I actually put it down, when I’m going to make a CD.
Popcorn Youth: Do you see yourself fitting in somewhere in the continuum of DJ culture, though?
Gregg Gillis: Yeah, a little bit. These days, DJs are a lot more progressive, So I mean I guess I do fit into that, but it’s a weird thing, because I don’t necessarily like playing with other DJs too much, it’s like they can just throw on a track of someone else’s remix. Everything I’m doing are my own remixes. At no point am I just playing someone’s song straight up, so it’s a little frustrating when I’m here to play a show, and there’s a DJ just dropping all of these mixes by these other producers from all over the world, and these great songs, and it’s weird, because it’s hard to compete with that, to do your own original thing. But yeah, I definitely have played sets on DJ bills before and at dance clubs and things, and I am using samples, so yeah I think I do fit in there a little bit, and there’s a lot of mash-up-style DJing going on, so it is an ambiguous kind of thing, like I don’t know where I fit in exactly in the continuum of DJ versus musician.
Popcorn Youth: Are you influenced by guys like Akufen, who, by constructing entire songs out of samples, perfected the technique of microsampling. In his final product, the original source is unrecognizable. But with you, you have a similar technique, but you choose pop songs that are super recognizable, as if that was intentional.Gregg Gillis: Yeah, yeah, I’m a big fans of his and a lot of guys who use stuff in a similar vein. I think I kind of made the transition a little over two years ago. I’ve always used pop hooks, but I mean it’s a matter of how much you can take. I know with Akufen, I’m sure even he uses pop samples that you can’t always recognize at times, so on my previous records, it was kind of more in his style, a lot of the beats and melodies sound just like original stuff actually come from a variety of sources. Actually, there is where I think I fit in, more or less, with those more sample-based musicians like that, except for the fact that it is blatant samples. So that’s where I’ve always positioned myself.
Popcorn Youth: Is there a reason why you choose huge pop hits or those great mainstream pop songs? Is it an aesthetic reason?
Gregg Gillis: There several reasons behind it. First the simplest reason is that I’m a big pop music fan. It’s all over the place, but I think a lot of people can relate that it’s just fun, cool elements of songs twisted into other songs. I will always love hip-hop songs with samples that I recognize, and when people recontextualize it, I think that’s just a great musical tool. There’s so much musical vocabulary that you can’t normally get with traditional instruments. That’s the other thing, that when you do take something that’s familiar and twist it and put it in this new meaning, like I said, it’s just a powerful, powerful tool, so I always thought that was interesting. Three of my albums are all kind of completely different musically, but the only consistent theme that shows is that it uses other people’s music. I just always am fascinated by the power of recontextualization and how fun it is.
Popcorn Youth: Your use of iconic classics — Kurt Cobain, Biggie, Jeff Mangum — and then twisting them all around, and, like you said, placing them in new contexts. By taking these familiar classic songs and take them out of context, do you ever feel that something gets lost somehow or cheapened in this post-modern, cut-and-paste scenario?
Gregg Gillis: Yeah, I mean kind of but at the same time, I think the whole point of the album is just embracing pop. My music is not political at its core or overtly social commentary; the main message of the album is that I’ve tried to equalize pop music on this level of appreciation but at the same time just recognizing that it’s all just pop music and that it’s all just entertainment. So the thing is, things may be lost, but I’m also not trying to recreate Nirvana with my album, I’m not trying to pay homage … I mean I’m paying homage to it all, but I’m not trying to create … I guess it is kind of a little, you could take it as sounding like I’m making fun of —
Popcorn Youth: No, no. That’s not what I was saying at all.
Gregg Gillis: Yeah, I was just saying it’s just kind of this embrace of it all, I don’t know if that answers the question at all. That was a tough one.
Popcorn Youth: I think I read somewhere that LL Cool J was a fan of yours. I was wondering if people you’ve sampled have been into you, been a fan of your work.
Gregg Gillis: Yeah, unfortunately I haven’t heard from any of the artists. With the LL Cool J thing, you probably heard that he was just at a party where my music was playing. I met LL Cool J for a second, but we didn’t actually talk about music. I know at this point, a few people on the album have heard it, but we haven’t actually heard back from anyone.
Popcorn Youth: I read on your Pfork column that you mentioned Christina’s song “Ain’t No Other Man.” Are you ever planning on taking your songs in that direction, pursuing more traditionally-arranged songs, like verse-chorus-verse?
Gregg Gillis: Yeah, I think I would be into that at this point, if the opportunity was there, but I’m working in a really specific medium. But if Christina Aguilera came up to me and asked me to produce a song for her, I could actually see myself taking a step back. I’ve been doing the odd remix for people; and doing remixes, I take on a different approach than with the music I do for Girl Talk. It’s a really specific idea and specific style that I’ve been working on, but yeah, even on my remix it’s a lot slower paced, just because I think it works better, it’s more logical, so if someone from a major label came up to me and said, “Produce this major track by blah blah blah what kind of samples do you want,” I could definitely see myself going in that direction.
Popcorn Youth: Do you ever see yourself fully embracing that producer role and working behind the scenes?
Gregg Gillis: Yeah, I think that would be really interesting. In general, I don’t have a really much of a traditional musical background I don’t know how much producers normally do. All the remixes thus far have been more production, and people just give me all the instruments parts, and I’ll make a new song out of it. So it’s been interesting and it’s something that I could get into.
Popcorn Youth: Is there is a discernible threshold between a mash-up track that samples ten tracks of the same tempo and something that is recognizably Girl Talk? Like, you go into a club, and you hear a certain kind of production, and you say, “Oh, that’s totally a Timbaland track.”
Gregg Gillis: I really can’t answer that. I really don’t know. To me, just based on the software that I use and the style that I make beats, to me I would imagine that at least my friends could recognize it. But with Timbaland, his tracks use his voice a lot, just small little things, it’s just the small intricate nature, and even if I had used just two songs and cut it up in a certain way I would hope — that’s my ultimate goal — that people would recognize the song as being a Girl Talk song. But yeah, as far as what individualizes them, I really can’t say.
Popcorn Youth: What do you think your music will sound like in 50 years when people have forgotten the original sources?
Gregg Gillis: Forever there will be pop music, but maybe people will talk about it in the context of nostalgia, but I think maybe that’s too conceptual for me. (Laughs) But yeah, I think in 50 years, and I’ve thought about this a little bit, it’d be hard to pinpoint a time line because the new album clearly uses tracks from the past two or three years intermixed with giant hits spread out over 40 years. So it’s definitely centered around the past 2 or 3 years. But it’s kind of even like with my parents — people like that who just think it’s a lot of crazy music. There is that recontextual element at the base of it, but at the same time, I just put together songs that I think will sound good together; so that’s almost a pure, pure situation where someone will not recognize them or know that they’re other pop songs, and just think it’s a crazy pop record that sounds diverse and cool.
Popcorn Youth: If aliens came to the earth, would the aliens think it was just this one song by this one person, this crazy, crazy song? Like, “this is what pop music was like in 2006.”
Gregg Gillis: (Laughs) Right, yeah that’s almost what I conceptualize about. Hopefully if you just create this pop music and you play it for people hopefully they will enjoy it, because I think I would.
Popcorn Youth: You’re sampling mainstream hip-hop and 70s AM-radio stuff, but what’s ironic is that your music appeals to indie/hipster kids who probably wouldn’t embrace those disparate elements each on their own terms. Why is that?
Gregg Gillis: I think there’s a few factors. The most obvious answer is the music review endorsement of Pitchfork, who kind of determines your crowd. At the same time I think it’s been a trend that things in the past have become a lot more popular to embrace as pop culture —
Popcorn Youth: And in a non-ironic way.
Gregg Gillis: — Right, right. ‘Cause I’ve been doing this for six years, and when I started doing this, I felt like the outcast showing up at the experimental electronic shows with my laptop, or showing up a rock concert and queuing my tracks all chopped up. It seems like a big thing in the past few years for these “indie dance nights” with indie rock next to the Yin Yang Twins. It’s officially everywhere, I’ve seen it, I’ve played it everywhere. It’s been all over the map, from the nerdy kid with glasses who stands next to the sorority girl.
With the world that I come from, and the background, it’s more of an experimental electronic world, which kind of goes hand in hand with indie world, and also the album absolutely endorses pop music and it is a celebration of pop and everything, but at the same time, it’s still weird music. It’s still really bizarre and the juxtapositions are really bizarre. I like them, but I’ve met plenty of people who’ve come up to me and said, they like rap music but don’t like 70s pop music, and blah blah blah blah, but yeah the combination and the pacing, it is straight up — like you said, that alien world — just this weird music that some indie person might endorse. I hope for some crossover appeal.
Popcorn Youth: Pitchfork has indeed played a growing role in your growing ubiquity, but how about these mp3 blogs? That was how I heard about you first, through those blogs.
Gregg Gillis: I think it’s really cool, actually. I didn’t understand how the blog world was until my album came out. I knew people with live journals and blogs, but I didn’t realize how important they were. When my record would get reviewed in a blog, people would send me emails like, “Oh my god, you got on this blog!” and I didn’t understand, like, “Who cares?” It’s just been insane and watching it, wow, it’s this clear thing like the blogs embraced it and they said certain things and then from there . . . I mean these people get sent CDs months in advance, and it took Pitchfork three months to review it. I guarantee that the fact that it popping up in all these blogs was why Pitchfork decided to pay attention. And then, all of sudden, music magazines and publications decide to take attention.
Popcorn Youth: Now it’s the little people — the fans — that become the taste makers, instead of the big magazines like Rolling Stone. What’s cool, what can be talked about, can now be in the hands of the music lover, not just the music critic or the music industry kingpin.
Gregg Gillis: Yeah, it’s insane and I think it’s awesome. It goes back to people in the blogs can take any risk they want, they can post whatever they want, they don’t have endorsements, it doesn’t matter what they write, and then you have Pitchfork where it matters a little bit more, because they have a readership they need to maintain — and it just keeps on getting watered out. So yeah, I think it’s awesome. [I] take a blogger’s view a lot more seriously than a website review or a magazine review; if you were writing for a magazine you’re thinking about your audience; at the blogger level, it’s the purest level of journalism. It;s been really insane to see that whole process.
Popcorn Youth: Do you ever read online music forums like ILM or Dissensus?Gregg Gillis: Um, no I really don’t keep up with those things. I work a day job, so I’m sitting in front of a computer all day. But yeah, I browse a few, I’ve never really posted on a message board, I’m kind of out of the loop on those things.Popcorn Youth: Will Girl Talk ever take over as your day job?
Gregg Gillis: I think I could right now actually, in the next year or two, it seems like. But right now I like my job, I think the job’s interesting, and I really like having the financial backing on the job so I can take more risks with the music. Then I can play shows for cheaper, like if someone has a house party I can just do it. It really helps not to worry about having to sell so many CDs in order to eat that day — it’s kind of a financial backing. And as far as touring and shows , I just have the computer, and it doesn’t take me too long to get there, and it’s this party thing so it kind of goes down on the weekend anyway, in general. And if I was just going on tour I don’t think that would translate as well to a random Tuesday night in some bar, whereas every show I play right now is handpicked. Rather than playing shows at the closest city, it’s all handpicked, individual shows on Fridays and Saturdays. There’s enough weekends to do every major city in the US. I wish I could get out and do Europe and stuff like that and have time to dedicate to making more remixes but right now I’m kinda holding it all back and doing it alright. Right now I’m satisfied and I’m pretty much maxed out in the amount of work I could do in a day.
