It also offered a lot less creative control than the unofficial remixing that drove the whole Girl Talk project. Remixing took time away from constantly tweaking the live shows, which were just starting to gain a certain reputation. After reworking songs for the likes of Beck, Of Montreal, and Grizzly Bear, though, Gillis quickly lost interest. When he first started attracting big attention, around the time of the 2006 release, Night Ripper, Girl Talk remixes quickly became a hot commodity on the indie circuit. This perceived outsider status didn’t stop other artists from approaching Gillis. “Even though I do occasionally interact with mainstream acts, and I’m a part of these bigger festivals, I still always feel isolated from that world, like I’m on my own thing.”
GIRLTALK MASHUP TV
“I exist in this weird space where my following is grass roots and I’ve never had support by radio or TV because all my music was sample-based and there’s a certain ceiling that exists,” Gillis says.
Indeed, one of the MCs who went onstage at the show was Philadelphia legend Freeway, who just finished collaborating on Girl Talk’s first release as a full-fledged hip-hop producer, Broken Ankles. At this year’s Coachella, he tried something new in an enviable slot just before the newly reunited Outkast–he had rappers like Busta Rhymes appear and spit verses over tracks like Arcade Fire’s anthemic “Wake Up.” This move did more than just incite audience insanity, it was a culmination of Gillis’s journey from sampling rappers to working with them directly. A former chemical engineer, Gillis has an intuitive knack for massaging a crowd’s pleasure center with different kinds of music that’s beloved for different reasons–until the audience doesn’t know whether to rejoice or riot. To put it bluntly, the audience completely loses its shit. It’s a clash of current rap verses and all-time classic pop beats that sounds decidedly contemporary, but the response it generates is utterly primal. The experience Gregg Gillis came to be known for optimally takes place in wide open spaces.
Gregg Michael Gillis Photo by Paul Sobota, courtesy of The Windish Agency
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