Customer Reviews

Night Ripper

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I love those late night infomercials for CD packages from Time-Life, you know like "sounds of the seventies" or "AM Gold." I love those infomercials because I don't have to sit through the entire song, I just hear the best parts and it gives me a memory from my childhood. This CD takes that idea a bit further. Not only do I get snippets of songs from the 70s, but there are songs included that were popular last month. All of it is swirled together and it don't stop. I've been facinated with "mash-ups" for quite a while, but this fills all of my want to hear any others. The pace of this disc keeps my attention the whole time. I have been listening to it so much I am a little afraid I'm going to memorize it and it will become predictable. There are some highlights: Notorious B.I.G. mixed with "Tiny Dancer," and my favorite, 2 LIVE Crew "We want some P****" playing over Pavement and Paul McCartney "Silly Love Songs." I love hearing Neutral Milk Hotel counting off at some point. I love hearing Ciara mixed in. M.I.A. sounds great in there at some point too. I don't know who does the song "Kryptonite," but on here it's great. I really hope to hear more from GIRL TALK and I hope it doesn't get popular enough to get pulled, maybe I shouldn't even be writing a review. Maybe I should give it a crappy review, but it rocks!

Keep this album at arm's length as long as possible and see how long before you're in its embrace. Owes as much to the "Hooked on Classics" genre of the 70s as it does contemporary mix n' mashes. The tracks manage to convey two ideas at once, and just as often, two truths about the same idea, as when the a 1970's chorus of "I love youuuu..." is matched with the 90's hip hop chant, "we want some pu**y..." Any song is as good as the next but why not try Bounce That which seems to hit a special kind of transendence toward the middle. Not suitable for children.

The title may seem a hasty assignment, but I have proclaimed (at last count) five different records that were supposed to be the best of the year. However, just when I think that the industry cannot surprise me beyond belief, artists keep doing it.
Most people will give this record a listen and associate the word "mash-up" with it. However apt the term may be, the production and the execution defies this definition and steps back as athird party and redefines all previous notions of the synonyms of and even the word itself.
Pitchfork Media claimed that, no matter how ambitious, no one can name all of the samples used on the record. This, with the word "mash-up" on the brain, may sound somewhat impossible. But, when Girl Talk uses anywhere between 20 and 40 samples on any one given track, the record becomes a finely arranged symphony of pop music and pop-culture. In essence, the disc makes me think of a research paper. The writer, Girl Talk, researched his beats, vocals, and instrumental lines beyond the call of duty. This record is a manifesto.
Just as a final note, Girl Talk does not just separate songs and their vocal lines, but shows his genius by splitting songs up and alternating pieces of songs in and out of the song, one minute mixing the vocals over a random mash of beats and instrumentals, and then alternates to the previous lyric set's instrumental track with a completely different sample on top of it.

To associate this artist: DJ Shadow and pop-culture meets the Invisible Skratch Picklz.

I discovered Girl Talk after stumbled across his remix of a Bonde Du Role song. There's 250 samples from 167 artists on the album. This is what happens when an engineering student discovers drugs. Play this album in your car and watch your friends ask, "hey, what is that?" Play it in a club and get everyone dancing. Sense of humor mandatory. Gregg Gillis is the mash up shiz.

This is one of the more different DJ mixes that I have ever heard. The only down side to this CD is that most of the tracks leave you wanting more. Track 5 is so good, that it was worth buying the CD, it is a mix with Notorious BIG and Elton John, it will blow your mind.

I stumbled upon this album purely by accident. I like mash-ups and always have, but I find most of them two dimensional and repetitive. One listen-through of this album and I was blown away. This album is more than just a jumble of music samples. There are a dozen or more samples in each song and they have been skillfully put together. The range of samples come from songs that are both old and new, nostalgic and currently popular, mashed together to create something familiar and completely new at the same time. Somehow, the samples work together cohesively, regardless of the age or genre of the song sampled and they are utilized/arranged in a way that they create something new, rather than just sounding like two, three, four songs that are similar in BPM, style, etc. and layered on top of each other. All of this makes for a fun and exciting listening experience. It's a fine line that's being treaded here, with Girl Talk scoring high because of the artful use of the samples.

Girl Talk is actually Gregg Gillis, who started making mash-ups when he was studying biomedical engineering at Case Western. My interest in Girl Talk increased when I learned more about Gillis. An advocate of the fair use doctrine, his brazen attitude against strict copyright laws make him both intriguing and controversial. He has been both criticized and praised for his work, receiving good reviews from both Time Magazine and Rolling Stone. Click on his Myspace page and the first thing you see is a link to purchase his newest album that says "Pay What You Want For The New Girl Talk Album".

For me, the combination of his composition skills and fair use beliefs make for a listening experience that's about more than just the samples.

Night Ripper is the third album released by Girl Talk, the stage name of American musician Gregg Gillis. He is best known for his use of mashups and digital sampling in making his music. Mashups are songs or compositions made by combining two or more pre-recorded songs. Digital sampling is the act of taking a portion of one sound recording and reusing it as part of a different song. The growth of sampling music originated with hip-hop music. Sampling is usually done with a computer program, but can also be done by using tape loops or with vinyl records on a phonograph. Both methods of creating new songs from existing music have become very popular, especially with the added ease of modern technology.

The album was created as one long piece of music that was later split into individual songs for the album. This has created an album that flows fairly smoothly throughout the entirety of the album, resulting in one of the best albums of the decade in my opinion. This album is the reason I fell in love with Girl Talk. It is the reason I fell in love with the genre. Gillis' use of music that spans genres and decades results in an album that is easily accessible to multiple generations and a non-stop dance party for anyone listening. From the very first note to the last, Night Ripper is an enjoyable ride through music that is mainstream mashed together with obscure music that some will find enjoyable to be able to identify. Part of the fun is actually trying to identify the samples used on the album, which often can be difficult, since Gillis used over 150 samples on the 45-minute album, and does very little repeating on the album.

High points for the album, for me, are Once Again and Minute by Minute. Once Again has attitude and a presence that I did not even realize was possible with sample music. Every time the song comes on, I cannot help but dance and have a good time, regardless of my mood when it comes on. Minute by Minute's entrancement is unexplainable to me, but I can still remember the first time I heard the song and discovered just how talented Gillis is. Despite these two songs being my favorite two songs on the album, this is not to say that I do not find the rest of the tracks almost as enjoyable. Each and every one of these songs have an identity on their own that shows just how capable Gillis is at taking music from other artists and making it his own. For those looking to delve into the genre of sample music and mashups, Night Ripper is highly recommended as great proof of what these genres are capable of. Just be warned that the album may leave listeners unimpressed by other DJs' attempts at the genre. Gillis has a quality that I have yet to find an equal for, but as long as he keeps turning out hits, I am okay with that.

Girl Talk is a mashup DJ, but instead of throwing two songs together like anyone else, he creates epic, album-length operas using dozens of artists and songs. It's generally pretty entertaining, and at times comes together into something pretty amazing. There's only a few different things being sampled at any one time, but things get switched up often enough to keep it from getting stale while the good transitions keep it as a cohesive experience. Night Ripper really can be listened to as one long piece of music, with some of the breaks between songs completely unnoticeable. Most of the vocals are from rap which is to be expected, but the instrumentals come from everywhere, and it's always a treat when you recognize something from a song you really like.

Some samples that jumped out at me or were used really well were The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony", "Where Is My Mind?" by Pixies, "Holland, 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel, and Smashing Pumpkins' "1979". Girl Talk plays a lot with pitch both in the music and the vocal bits. It's cool how he can take a well known melody and use it in a completely different way, even making a voice into percussion or something. There are also a couple instrumental bits used here and there he made himself, mostly crunchy electronic stuff that enhances the mood effectively. Throwing other people's music into a blender isn't the height of the creative arts, but Girl Talk sure does a hell of a lot with it.

Gregg Gills is visionary, and this album is a testament to that. The different tracks are mixed with such skill that the blend between tracks and mixes is completely fluid and sounds great. Ive heard a few mashup artists that I really like, but Gills takes the cake with this album.

I can only imagine that this album will become banned someday soon, so if you collect music, own it! It is worth every penny you will pay for it.

I could go through and tell you every part of this album that I love, (and there are MANY) but I won't. You need to hear this album all the way through, from "Once Again" to the end of "Peak Out".

This is a great album for me because I never listen to the radio and don't keep up with current pop music. The songs are recognizable but I would never listen to them on a daily basis. Night Ripper forces me to. A lot of the songs that are packed into this album appear to be fairly current (though, to be honest, I haven't looked too deep into the majority of the samples). Even so, it's all the pop or mainstream music I could ever want packed into a non-stop dance mix that's full of surprises. I agree with another reviewer, this mix isn't necessarily for a purpose but many of the combinations are similar to what The Hood Internet has been doing. The mixes are odd, unthinkable, and always entertaining.

This frequents my CD changer or car now and continuously makes me smile. Like I said, it's recommended for people like myself who rarely listen to the radio or keep up with pop music but still enjoy its catchiness. The good sides of pop are around every corner in Night Ripper.