The Fillmore Miami Beach went clubbing last night as Gregg Gillis, AKA Girl Talk, brought his digital mashups to the South Florida stage for the first time in two years (He’ll play again tonight). Boasting five albums’ worth of music that reincorporates unauthorized songs from popular artists, Gillis has enjoyed little in the way of commercial airplay, but he’s become something of an underground sensation: a musical Robin Hood taking the sounds of wealthy pop, rock and hip-hop stars and giving his mixes away for free on hiswebsite.
His fan base appears to have increased exponentially in the two years since he played Fort Lauderdale’s Culture Room. The more appropriately sized Fillmore swelled with fans on the dance floor, many wearing neon and carrying glow sticks, beach balls and mind-altering substances.
But first, English multi-instrumentalist Max Tundra performed his brand of complex, occasionally danceable hipster electro that he’s perfected over three albums on Domino. Balding and checker-shirted, his arms flailing wildly about the stage, he resembled a middle-aged accountant auditioning at a local talent show. But his music is good, his stage presence unpredictable and he has a great neo-soul voice when he wants to sing.
Then Girl Talk took the stage, opening with the thunderous chords of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs†and never slowing down from there. Gillis thrives in the juxtapositions between mainstream and indie, hip-hop and rock, art music and music for the masses, forging unlikely collaborations between artists and prompting us to rethink the source material. Still, ironically, though it contains hundreds of different samples, there is a sameness to Girl Talk’s music after a while; predictable formulas emerge. If you’ve heard one Girl Talk track, you’ve heard them all, and his live show is like one long track.
But Gillis does his best to keep the momentum up and the hands in the air. The bells and whistles of his live act are exceptional. The light show projected behind him features all manner of shapes and sizes, including cityscapes, horses, sharks, tacos, geometric patterns, crowd commands and other imagery that may or may not relate to the mashups erupting from the speakers around them. The stage itself is filled from the get-go with fans who clamored onto it – Gillis is all about dissolving the barrier between audience and artist. The most fun aspect of the Girl Talk show may be the amount of extra material raining down upon the stage, from toilet-paper streamers to confetti to balloons. I don’t relish the job of the Fillmore clean-up crew, but it was a blast while it lasted. And it’s all happening again tonight.
Girl Talk will be at the Fillmore Miami Beach, 1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach, at 9 tonight. Tickets are $23. Call 305/673-7300 or visit www.livenation.com.
Check out more photos of Girl Talk on our Facebook page!
