The new Girl Talk album arrived online today, just in time for the summer grilling /cruising/reveling-on-the-front-porch season. Feed The Animals doesn’t deviate from the Night Ripper template—it’s another balls-out, hour-long stream of mashed-up pop hits from both today’s charts and Now That’s What I Call Music compilations of yore—but it may even be a slight improvement over its highly hyped predecessor. This time around, Gregg Gillis skirts some of the more cloying pairings that bogged down Night Ripper, and when the mix threatens to become too manic, he cools it down with tempered patches of hip-hop before returning to disco overdrive. Joys abound: Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” is fused with Kanye West’s “Flashing Lights;” forgotten Ace of Base, Tag Team and Faith No More jams resurface; Ol’ Dirty Bastard is tempered by Yo La Tengo’s “Autumn Sweater,” and DJ Kool clears his throat over “Come On Eileen.”
The album is available on Illegal Art’s Web site with a faux-altruistic, Radiohead-esque “pay-what-you-want” pricing plan. If you want high-quality mp3s of the album, or the album as one continuous track—which is “how Gillis intended for people to listen to the album,” we’re lectured—you’ll have to cough up at least $5, but otherwise, given Gillis’ refusal to pay for any of the songs he samples, downloaders shouldn’t feel too guilty if they stiff the tip jar this time around.
