Gregg Michael Gillis (born October 26, 1981), better known by his stage name Girl Talk, is an American musician. Gillis, who lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has released four LPs on the record label Illegal Art and EPs on
... Gregg Michael Gillis (born October 26, 1981), better known by his stage name Girl Talk, is an American musician. Gillis, who lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has released four LPs on the record label Illegal Art and EPs on 333 and 12 Apostles. He began making music while studying biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He produces mashup-style remixes, in which he uses often a dozen or more unauthorized samples from different songs to create a new song; The New York Times Magazine has called his music "a lawsuit waiting to happen," a criticism that Gillis has attributed to a mainstream media that wants "to create controversy where it doesn’t really exist," citing fair use as a legal backbone for his sampling practices.
He has given different explanations for the origin of his stage name, once saying that it alluded to a Jim Morrison poem and once saying that it alluded to an early Merzbow side project. Most recently, he attributed the name to a grunge band called TAD, based in Seattle.
In school, Gillis focused on tissue engineering. He later worked as an engineer, but quit in May 2007 to focus solely on music.
Awards:
In 2007, Gillis was the recipient of a Wired magazine Rave Award.
In December 2008, Feed the Animals was number four on Time Magazine's Top 10 Albums of 2008.
In 2008, Rolling Stone magazine published a very positive review of Feed the Animals and gave the album four stars. They ranked the album as #24 on their Top 50 albums of 2008.
Blender magazine rated Feed the Animals as the second-best recording/album of 2008.
Film appearances:
In 2007, Gillis appeared in Good Copy Bad Copy, a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture. In 2008, Gregg once again played the fair-use protagonist in an acclaimed documentary entitled RiP!: A Remix Manifesto, which won multiple awards during 2008 film festivals.
Night Ripper