The air will be thick with pheromones, both secreted and synthetic. The floor will be soaked in sweat, beer foam and spilled Red Bull. And this whole spastic scene will seem like total Top 40 chaos, just barely controlled by some hyperactive longhaired DJ who kinda looks like David Lee Roth's skinny, skaterish baby brother.
But if you can avoid getting too dangerously drunk, drugged-up and horny, you might still be able to delve deeply enough into the superdense sonic layers of these Girl Talk tracks to discern this ingenious dude's extremely careful, exceedingly deliberate and methodically tested approach to the science of party starting.
"On the surface, I think [the Girl Talk project] has a very party-based aesthetic," admits mashup artist Greg Gillis, the man behind the moniker. "At the shows, there's confetti and balloons and people sweating. And that's great. But at the same time, I've always been big on the idea of creating something original that's based entirely upon someone else's creation. I've always wanted to present this as new music based on samples. And with the albums, I never want them to be considered traditional DJ mixes. Ideally, I wish people could say, 'My favorite album this year was the Girl Talk album,' and not say, 'this mix that he did.'"
Last year's 71-minute slab, All Day, finds Gillis making serious steps toward that end. His newest and most ambitious experiment so far was released as a free download in November and practically shut down the Internet in the process. Eight months later, demand remains high; tickets for this 7-Eleven-sponsored show, which finds Girl Talk sharing his Thursday-night bill with Chicago hip-hop duo The Cool Kids, sold out in under an hour.
