Girl Talk (otherwise known as DJ Gregg Gillis) released Night Ripper here in the US in May 2006. Despite the bevy of rave reviews it received from prominent websites, I chose to ignore it. I guess 2006 was just not a hip-hop kinda year for me. So now, some twenty-two months later, and with a brand new Girl Talk album on the horizon in 2008, Night Ripper is getting a proper UK release. I jumped at the chance to review it, keen to discover what I had missed out on those two summers ago. Hmph.Night Ripper is the ultimate mashup album and it boasts plenty of surprises, twists, turns, and ever-so-brief journeys down our musical memory lane. Here's the math: the average track length is slightly more than two and a half minutes, and the sixteen tracks contain an average of thirteen samples per track. Needless to say even the most extreme music fanatic would have to strain to catch all those. The most fun aspect of Night Ripper is catching the snippets of songs that you do know, especially if said snippets recall nostalgic times. Alternately, the most frustrating aspect of the album are the samples that are too brief or too buried to be properly identified. Thank you Wikipedia. The numbers also suggest that Night Ripper could have, and perhaps should have, been a tremendous train wreck of an album. Yet it really isn't a train wreck at all; in fact it's downright entertaining. At least for the first two or three listens after which the novelty wears off and you're left with an album relegated to the role of background party music.There's no doubt that Gillis is a master at what he does. He has an ear for the mashup; at first glance it's genius to underscore Ludacris' rhymes with 70's rock powerhouse Boston. Or back the crunk of the Ying Yang Twins with the unmistakable string hook of The Verve's 'Bittersweet Symphony'. Or smash some 'Wonderwall' up against rapper Slim Thug. Oh, and that's all in the first track alone. By the time we get to Elton John vs. The Notorious B.I.G., Salt-N-Pepa vs. George Michael, James Brown vs. Public Enemy, The Smashing Pumpkins vs. Three 6 Mafia”¦ we get it, Gregg, we get it.My issues with this album far outweigh the brief moments of enjoyment that it provided. I hesitate to call it an album, as it's really no more than a gigantic mixtape all jumbled together. And can we really consider all the splicing, smooshing, stretching, chopping, slowing and speeding of the mashup medium true art? At what point is it just plain stealing? Oddly enough, the aforementioned sample from 'Bittersweet Symphony' was itself a sample from The Rolling Stones' 'The Last Time'. No doubt Gillis was quite aware of this fact and included that particular sample as an ironic twist. The thing is, though, The Verve got sued for overuse of the sample. Thus far Gillis has avoided legal action, though he did seem to tempt fate when he used Night Ripper's liner notes to thank the artists he sampled. All 165 of them. 60%Links Girl Talk [official site] [myspace]