The high-minded conceptual tropes of the original plunderphonic artists, John Oswald and Negativland, were not exactly anyone's idea of party music--pointed and often humorous cultural critique, but generally not something one could dance to. The post-Napster Internet-era of accelerated consumption has ushered in a new generation of pop-culture recyclers. These young laptop jockeys are as hell-bent on filling dance floors as they are on smashing commonplace genre banalities. Gregg Gillis (Girl Talk) is the sampledelic wunderkind behind NIGHT RIPPER, a rollicking 40-minute ride through hundreds of musical fragments, from (seemingly) as many different music styles. NIGHT RIPPER could easily have come across as a novelty record, but Gillis is no ordinary bedroom DJ-cum-producer. Abolishing the classic mash-up formula of vocal a capella over instrumental tracks, Gillis freely mixes snippets from a dizzying array of '80s pop, classic rock, grunge, Dirty South rap, and even Bollywood banghra beats. On the track "Bounce That," Gillis lays down a Ludacris rap over Elastica's "Connection" (itself an appropriation of Wire's "Three Girl Rhumba") in one of the album's stranger moments. Seamlessly mixed--as if by a highly skilled, attention-deficit-addled DJ--NIGHT RIPPER is a joyous, schizophrenic, and highly entertaining mess.
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