Radiohead beat mash-up artist Greg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, to the punch last year with their now infamous pay-what-you-want download system, but the approach seems a better fit for the audience Gillis creates music for: the instant gratification generation. The CD version of his sophomore continuous mix of pop/rock/electro/rap hybrids won't be available until September, but Gillis has already publicly acknowledged the need to get (“feed”) the digital version in the headphones of his fans (“animals”) sooner rather than later. With so much of Animals sampling songs currently on the pop charts (along with an equal dose of classics, fret not scorners of modern pop radio), timeliness directly correlates with Girl Talk’s appeal. And with no minimum donation required - if you choose to pay nothing, you must include your reasoning - literally anyone with internet access could get their 2008 Girl Talk fix as soon as the tunes came back from mastering.

Girl Talk's place in the musical landscape is complicated by being the only artist with LP-length mash-up mixes properly distributed on a massive scale. For numerous reasons – chiefly his propensity to cram two dozen wide ranging samples into a three minute track rather than utilize the more common mash-up procedure of scrambling just two dissimilar songs - Gillis is at the top of a subgenre mostly littered with single track downloads and casually shared zip file mixtapes. Distinguishing yourself as a mash-up artist when your hooks and rhythms are derived from other works will always be an onerous task and even though someone with similar technical proficiency will surely try to steal Gillis' crown eventually they’ll likely be dismissed as a Girl Talk rip off regardless of their talent level but now that Gillis sells out major clubs in metropolitan cities.

Fortunately, none of this industry breakdown talk matters when listening to Feed the Animals. Without ever speaking a word or playing an original note, Gillis conveys a simple but powerful message: celebrate popular music – any and all kinds. He doesn't care if it's only popular with the indie kids or if it appeals to middle schoolers. He doesn't care if the tune he’s recontextualizing hasn’t been widely appreciated in ten years or if it's number one on the pop charts right now. Gillis just wants to connect with music lovers of all kinds, which is ultimately why his bulging nondiscriminatory sample packages have catapulted him to a certain level of stardom. Now this isn't to say Gillis doesn't have taste, because he clearly has a very confident sense of what make the best bells, whistles, verses, and beats for an outrageously joyous selection of party songs. Gillis never lapses into being a lazy collage artist, however, and avoids the repetitiveness of a stereotypical banger maker, instead crafting some outstandingly unforgettable moments of postmodern pastiche.

While inciting dancing is certainly the primary motivation for combining blissful upbeat clips of famous cuts, Girl Talk’s magic always starts in the heapdhones before it gets to the dancefloor. Sultry sugar meets sexy synth when Britney Spears sings over Air's “Sexy Boy” on “Give Me a Beat,” Hot Chip and The Cardigans are spliced together to perform an imaginary dream pop duet on “Hands in the Air,” and even an unprocessed Lil Wayne croons his mega-hit “Lollipop” over Red Hot Chili Peppers' perfectly-matched “Under the Bridge” slow riff on “Play Your Part (Pt. 2),” all of which are mellower standout moments. The ecstatic portions are just as rewarding: Bubba Sparxxx somehow sounds like he's smiling when he spits out a verse over Dexy's Midnight Runners on “Set it Off” and even The Band's grandpa pleaser “The Weight” battles Young Joc magnificently on “Still Here.” Something important to keep in mind: every twofer just mentioned also incorporates other less discernible sounds and only lasts for 10-30 seconds on its respective track before it rambunctiously switches over to a new mashing. So if any of those pairings sound unappetizing, you only have to suffer them for a blink of an eye before you find something that does tickle your pickle. Of course, diving into Feed the Animals with that pick-and-choose outlook (which is often unavoidable), can quickly turn insanely awesome into obnoxiously insane: such as the ill-equipped pairing of Lil Mama's  sassy bark with Metallica on “Lip Gloss” (just say no, kids).

After ingesting all 52 minutes of Feed the Animals’ in-your-face instant gratification the listener can’t help but feel overstimulated, making one pine for a period of silence, but for fans of both adventurously groundbreaking tunes and those who simply support celebrating popular music, the album is an indispensable one-stop shop.