Girl Talk at Barden’s Boutique

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Girl Talk’s first “official” London show. For someone who packs out huge clubs in the States it must have been a bit weird to play a tiny basement in Stoke Newington, although that said, he managed to fill the venue and quite a few people were turned away while I stood gloating in the cordoned off smoking area.

How to describe Girl Talk? He’s like Negativland’s hipper younger brother, Soulwax with ADHD or Jive Bunny hitting the top 40. His performance was like a night out at a shit pop club compressed into 45 minutes of awesome. A cut-up artist that dances across genres picking and choosing his favourite motifs of different tracks to layer over one another and create something new.

The set was slightly weird; for an artist that relies on using and abusing other people’s hooks, he’d start up with the hooks from a track from the excellent Night Ripper album and then go off in a completely different direction and then veer back into “more familiar” territory on a whim. So would those be defined as meta-hooks? Plunderphonics can be confusing sometimes.

I wanted to see what kind of setup he was using, as I’ve heard wildly different reports on the software he uses ranging from the obvious Ableton Live to the terrifying AudioMulch, but sadly this was impossible as the second the show started in earnest the predominately hipster crowd rushed the stage and much grinding was had.

Anyway, aside from an ugly violent altercation at the end, the set was fucking fantastic, one of the most enjoyable shows I’ve been to and stunning that he could perform it all live. If you like mash-ups or find you have a guilty pleasure when it comes to pop, I can’t recommend Girl Talk enough. Night Ripper is genius and the only mix album that comes close in skill and diversity of music is Liam Howlett’s The Dirtchamber Sessions. That said, I’d stay away from his previous two albums unless you particularly like sub-The Action Packed Mentalist Brings You The Fucking Jams glitch-pop.