Girl Talk

[Wil Welsh]

To the previous topic, I'd like to mention that THD's remix of Lost Minds was great.  Highly capable remix artist.

As a very early adopter of digital DJ technologies I have a bit of experience on the topic.  You can script everything before a performance and just press play.  I did that a few times between 1997 & 1999 when I was first dabbling with it to highly negative results from the crowds.  You can also script everything so that you just press play when its time for the tracks to overlap, providing the illusion of performance.  This is what about most well regarded digital djs do these days.   With the beat grid in Traktor and the equivalent technology in Abelton (warp markers), you take about 85% of the guesswork out of DJ'ing.  All that's left is key selection, and tools like Allen & Heath's MixedInKey software are emerging that allow even tone deaf djs to come close to resolving that area of difficulty.  

The age is upon us where a dj can just press play and come out with great sounding stuff for hours on end, without much talent or genuine know-how.  Most aspects are mechanized and performance is optional or left to times when its most convenient.  Anymore, most dj sets are at semi-automated by default and DJs will just jump around and twiddle knobs to the extent that they don't cause a trainwreck and lose track of the stuff that the machine was doing for them.  Most of it is showmanship.  At least that's in other cities... half the time when I get out to a club in Pittsburgh, the dj's are typically chronically under skilled, with poor equipment, and apathetic to the point that they don't even try to beatmix, let alone more advanced stuff like harmonic boost mixing.

There is an interesting argument that the new software can allow for additional expressiveness unavailable to previous generations that includes creating music, and as such has blurred the lines between the two.  The fact that people are enabled to blur the line, however, doesn't mean that most people who tote a laptop (and the right software) to a gig is doing any such thing.   Ritchie Hawtin and DJ Donna Summer are good exmaples of stepping well over that line.  My ears aren't so sure that's the case with the latest Girl Talk album.  I didn't realize it was being promoted as a musical creation.  It sounds like a bunch of mashups generated by taking loops of pop music and mixing acapella versions over it.  Granted its done at a higher pace than the previous generation of dj albums (Coldcut's Journey's By Dj Vol. 1 comes to mind as an album with a similar character), but at the end of the day I don't hear anything that sounds like it was crafted from scratch.  That lone fact makes me skeptical that it genuinely  blurs the line between dj & artist like the first two gentlemen mentioned.

I've been contenplating the Leonardo da Vinci quote, "The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance," when the subject of Girl Talk comes up.  I can never solidly decide if its great performance, or just fresh technique.   Since I'm versed with the tools of the trade, I often lean towards technique.  It seems to me, that most of his output is the result of careful music editing and mathematics rather than genuine creative flow.  

Now, contrast that semi-automated editing room output with what a character like Jeremy does during his gigs, and the grey area nearly disappears entirely with the additional contrast as reference.  

I don't know about 100% unwarranted celebrity though.  Girl Talk's stuff is way more intricate than any other dj work in the marketplace.  There has to be a way to sift the cream from the curd at the end of the day and I think Girl Talk's notarity is warranted to some degree.  I tend to reserve that specific judgement for the times when I come across gimmicks like the "topless rave dj" one.  Girl talk does have something special... even if its just a superior work ethic and a good tool box.