man, this girl talk album, feed the animals. talk about unrestrained. no regard for copyright law, song structure, or even propriety in genre. this album is genius. i’m halfway through it, and i still have no idea how he did it. i’ve done a mash-up before, mixing fort minor’s “remember the name” with the verve’s “bittersweet symphony,” so i kind of understand what it takes to mix two different pieces into a cohesive effort. “feed the animals”, however, is mind blowing. how do you even begin making a girl talk track? how do you make something with so much disregard for generic conventions of cohesiveness and simply “go with what feels good.”
he doesn’t even stay in the same theme for more than a minute. you’ll hear the drum fill from “in the air tonight” lodged somewhere and that’s it. another sample. there’s no logic to how a track’s supposed to go. no fades, no clues as to what comes next. there aren’t any statements to be made. just musical interjections. pleasant surpirses. radiohead and blackstreet, avril lavigne, twisted sister, kenny loggins, sinead o’connor, the beatles. they’re all in there, amidst hundreds more. each sample taken liberally and combined with something else. best comparison i can come up with is a photo-collage made up of different parts of famous people to make a new, distorted, but somehow accessible-looking, face.
i wish i had that sort of liberty. i wish i was unbounded by these lessons of propriety and just let go creatively. i feel like my music and my design is so utilitarian at times, serving, above all, the content and the audience. which is both the right and the professional thing to do. but there are days when i just want to cut loose and go crazy, let go and defy conventions. better said, i wish i never learned the conventions in my craft in the first place, just so i could make something as ridiculous as this. i want to go crazy, then take a step back, look at what i’ve made, and then pare things down. i always feel like my work needs “one more thing.” i want to get to the point where my work constantly needs “one less thing.” to do more than necessary and not stop just because i’ve satisfied some rule of structure and necessity.
now that the album’s almost done, here’s some things i’m learning:
- do lots and lots of research. i’ve seen the sample list for feed the animals. it is HUGE. it was meant to be a game for music fans, pinpointing as many samples and musical shoutouts as possible. i can’t begin to imagine how much music greg gillis had to study and listen to just to make this. sure, he’s probably had some inspiration in his head, but i’m guessing he went back and listened to tons more music just to glean the ones he used for this. he probably didn’t even use all of the samples he listened to, saving them for future reference.
- keep a library of the things you researched. it’s not enough just to casually look at things. they need to be stored, analyzed, just so that they can be retrieved as needed.
- experiment. the only plausible way this was made was through tons of experimentation. this could not have been done in one go.
- let go. for a moment, forget what your teachers taught you as “proper” and just go with what you feel is right for that problem and just TRY that outlandish thing. then save it for later use if it doesn’t work. it’ll probably work in the future.
- always do more than necessary. if it feels like it’s finished, try a version where something more is added. keep adding until it feels “too much”.
So I started a little side project today: I’m posting my Dad’s, Bing Rodrigo, music on YouTube. Check it out here.
