Decoding Girl Talk: New Website Breaks Apart, Illustrates the Swirling Samples

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Girl Talk performs at the 2009 Bonnaroo Festival

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NewsFeed can’t tell you the number of times we’ve listened to a Girl Talk album and thought, “What song is that?”  We can usually recognize the dominant track—most likely a Jay-Z or Busta Rhymes number—but unless the underlying sample is particularly famous or catchy, we have no idea what it is. (via Techland)

Luckily, Mashupbreakdown.com has solved that problem for us. As Girl Talk’s new album All Day plays, little boxes light up, representing the different tracks that are being sampled at that moment. You can learn a lot about yourself by watching those boxes. For example, NewsFeed is very bad at recognizing the sweet, sweet melodies of the Electric Light Orchestra.

More than 370 songs are overdubbed, sped up, slowed down and mashed together on All Day; there’s no way a cursory listen will allow you to catch all of the album’s hidden gems. The website also helps illustrate the fact that DJ Gregg Gillis is more than just a maker of awesome mixtapes. Did you think to layer 2 Live Crew, Trick Daddy, and Shorty Long over the Temptations? No, no you didn’t.  Our point exactly.

Want to see the full Girl Talk mash-up breakdown? TIME’s Techland blog has more info for you right here.