Secret Diary

Girl Talk | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 9, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Illegal Art
• ASIN: B000F9RM34
• Also Available in: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #118,520 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Where all the Girl Talk fun begins! "[With] John Oswald-ian reconfiguring of pop [and] cut & pasted bits of Joan Osborne and Jay-Z that fly past in a blur, Secret Diary runs the gamut from fullout songs of pilfered parts combined in a patchwork matter to Olivia Tremor Control-ish noise collages." -FakeJazz

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Before They Were Famous..., February 15, 2007

By 

mattyp4 (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Secret Diary (Audio CD)

Like the other reviewers before me, I will preface this by saying that I LOVE the Night Ripper album. It's a brilliantly calculated album of near perfect mash-ups. And one of the best albums of 2006.

Unstoppable, the previous album, is not as strong, but you can tell he was improving his craft, working his way up to the brilliance of Night Ripper. At least those songs sound like mash-ups in the traditional sense.

But Secret Diary, his first album, is just a mess. These "songs" are nowhere near as fluid & coherent as his later albums. Instead it sounds like your CD player is skipping. (As one reviewer pointed out, I too had to check to make sure the disc wasn't damaged!) Either that, or it brings to mind the sound your radio makes as you quickly scroll across the dial, catching split-second snippets of songs. I'd be hard-pressed to call it music. And it's certainly nothing you can dance to! One track, "Time To Get Glamorous," doesn't even use songs, but rather sound effects & such!

This album is more a meditation on noise experimentation if nothing else. It's the CD equivalent to record scratching. And it's not enjoyable. Skip this & instead go for Night Ripper & Unstoppable.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I wonder what could have been..., September 25, 2006

By 

Amberic "Amber and Eric" (Baltimore, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Secret Diary (Audio CD)

This is damn near unlistenable. It won't ever be played again. It's like they took what might have been a good mix/mash and destroyed it on purpose by sending through some assinine chain of effects boxes. There's so much distortion and bit-rate manipulation that you can't tell what's going on underneath. And that's the problem, you can't hear the music. Art is art, whatever, but this just isn't fun to listen to. It's not thoughtful, playful, deep, or anything else, it's noise for the sake of noise.

I gave Night Ripper 5 stars but I can't in good conscience recommend this whatsoever.

17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Is this serious?, February 13, 2007

By 

John Ellison Atkins (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Secret Diary (Audio CD)

I will be the first to say that Girl Talk's "Night Ripper" is simply incredible, and it never seizes to amaze me everytime I listen to it, which is approaching the thousands.

This obsession led to a understandable Girl Talk high, prompting me to order this album.

To be honest, I spent the first hour of owning it testing the CD in every disc playing device I owned, making sure that my ears weren't deceiving me. I was convinced the disc was severely scratched or damaged. However, I was completely wrong. The tracks are supposed to be like that.

One of the most annoying things I can think of is a cd skipping, killing a mood. This entire album is intentionally like that, and it's repulsing.

Purchase Night Ripper, which is nearly perfect, but under no circumstances purchase this album.