Digital Winners

On paper his musical approach may look like a copyright suit waiting to happen, but in reality it’s really not, as Girl Talk (aka Gregg Gillis) insists.

For one, the very foundation of music lies on recycling trends past, and secondly, record companies have more or less accepted the digital revolution, which is no longer ‘coming’ and is already here.
“I’m not going to name any names – just because one person asks me for a remix doesn’t mean the rest of their team backs their decision,” says Gillis ever so carefully. “What’s surprised me is that most of these people are tied to the major labels, they’re not exactly indie acts, man. I’ve been asked to remix a backcatalogue which contained a 30-CD box set of hits from 1965-1986!
“I’m glad to see that the industry is trying to collaborate and make peace with digital technology. Besides, the battle over the digital revolution is finished. It’s already happened, it’s not happening anymore – we are in it right now.”
While Gillis claims that when it comes to the audio side of things the law has nothing on him, making complementary film clips is still a different story.
“Despite all these adjustments the industry has made in their outlook, at the end of the day they are always going to be wanting to sell millions of CDs and make the most money possible, of course. I’m not in a position to be making videos, but they can’t really touch my music, I’ve even played the after-parties of the shows that the people I’ve sampled have just played. It’s hilarious because more and more big names are sending me stuff with a side-note saying, ‘check this out…’ hoping for me to take a hint.”
And he does, sometimes managing to make his edit sound a thousands times better than the original.
“The goal in the past few years has been to raise the bar each time. Naturally, I feel like I’ve gotten better with the programs and technology I use ... The big change has been me being open-minded towards using large segments of songs and maybe even using multiple parts from the same song. Now I am trying to find more of a connection between the original artist and the edit.”

Girl Talk performs at the Big Day Out Sunday January 22. bigdayout.com