Girl Talk

There are more than 300 songs on Girl Talk's third CD, "Night Ripper." Sounds outrageous, we know, even considering that Gregg Gillis, the 25-year-old biomedical engineer who moonlights as Girl Talk, is a DJ, or a mash-up artist, or -- his preferred term -- a sample-based act. The opening track on "Night Ripper," which clocks in at just under 2 1/2 minutes, is made of pieces of 16 tunes.

Perhaps even more mind-boggling than the songs-sampled-to-time-elapsed ratio is the sheer breadth of Gillis's database: Hall & Oates, Busta Rhymes, Sonic Youth, James Taylor, Young Jeezy, Folk Implosion, G-Unit, Jefferson Airplane, and 159 other artists are heard on "Night Ripper." Gillis thanks all of them in the liner notes for the album, which wound up on a handful of high-profile "best of" lists for 2006, including Spin magazine's.

"Night Ripper" is an exhilarating dance record that doubles as a wacky shrine to pop music. It comes as no surprise to learn that Gillis, who plays a sold-out show at the Middle East tomorrow, is one of the few 20-somethings who still listen to the radio.

"My main listening time is in the car, half an hour every day on the way to and from work," says Gillis, who called on a recent Thursday morning from Pittsburgh ; he was waiting to board a flight for California , where he had shows in Sacramento, San Francisco, and Los Angeles over the weekend. "I listen to hip-hop, but mostly to the oldies station. My car is a '97 Cavalier with a tape deck, and I also have a nice collection of cassettes from high school. You know, '90s alternative. And early new jack swing. And indie underground bands a little more because I'm kind of part of that for the first time."

More and more people are listening to Gillis for the first time, even if they don't know it. Recently he's been recruited to do remixes for Beck, Good Charlotte, Peter Bjorn and John, and Grizzly Bear, which means more strain on Gillis's already stretched schedule. Earlier on the day we spoke, Gillis went to work and pretended to suddenly become sick. His packed suitcase was in the car. Gillis's colleagues in a product research division of an engineering company he declines to name don't know about his other life -- which seems nearly impossible given the press Girl Talk is getting. So far he's persuaded the local papers to use photos that show him wearing sunglasses and not to use his real name in their stories.

"I work in a suburb. It's not like people are open and do weird things. So it just didn't come up, and at the beginning when I was going out, like, once a month, when it wasn't encompassing my life, it was easy," Gillis says. "Now that it's getting bigger I'd like to tell them, but it's weird because it's been so long and they'll wonder what else I'm lying about."

Gillis discovered experimental noise as a young teenager. He began working with samples, and adopted the alter ego Girl Talk, during college at Case Western Reserve. That's also where he started developing his live show, which has evolved into a wildly interactive blow-out that's notorious for flying beers, fans storming the stage, and nudity. Gillis describes it as a cross between a rock show and a house party. Jake Trussell, who runs the local Mashit vinyl label and spins at the Enormous Room as DJ C, says what sets Gillis apart is his incredible ears.

"He thinks about pitch, timing, and tempo," Trussell says. "He keeps it interesting with Southern hip-hop and '80s stuff and Top 40. It's fresh. And it's just so much fun."

Aside from a brief stint playing sax in the third grade, Gillis never made music of his own -- although plenty of people (including Gillis) would argue that his radical recontextualizations of pop songs are as inventive and creative as more conventional compositions.

" I feel that there's no original music happening anywhere," Gillis says. "So many quote unquote original songs are Beatles songs with effects pedals. I feel like I'm doing a more blatant form of that. And I think people see it as a whole new product."

That perspective may not resonate with legal departments at record companies. Gillis didn't obtain permission to use any of the samples on the disc. He records for an indie label called Illegal Art, a haven for sample-based artists founded in 1998, which has preemptively prepared a so-called fair use legal defense just in case. One of the key arguments is that the new music is so different from the original it wouldn't encroach on the sampled artists' markets.

"I've talked to lots of major labels recently for remixes and it's never come up ," Gillis says. " They don't perceive it as a threat. If anything it's a promotional tool, it sparks people's interest. No one is buying my album instead of someone's album that I sample."