''Feed the Animals'' is the fourth

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by American musician Gregg Gillis, released under his

stage name A stage name is a pseudonym used by performers and entertainers—such as actors, comedians, singers, and musicians. Such professional aliases are adopted for a wide variety of reasons and they may be similar, or nearly identical, to an individu ...

Girl Talk by

Illegal Art Illegal Art is a sampling record label that was started in 1998. The label gained immediate notoriety from legal threats surrounding '' Deconstructing Beck'', a compilation made exclusively from sampling Beck's music. This was followed by two ot ...

on June 19, 2008. Illegal Art originally released the album as a digital download through their website using a "

pay what you want Pay what you want (or PWYW, also referred to as value-for-value model) is a pricing strategy where buyers pay their desired amount for a given commodity. This amount can sometimes include zero. A minimum (floor) price may be set, and/or a suggeste ...

" pricing system. Like much of his previous work, Gillis composed ''Feed the Animals'' almost entirely using samples of other artists' music and minor elements of his own original instrumentation.

Background

Gillis stated that with ''Feed the Animals'', he wanted to produce an album "you can sit down, relax, and listen to over and over again, finding out new things", in contrast with the fast-paced, frenetic nature of his live performances. ''Feed the Animals'' builds on the mashup format of previous Girl Talk albums, with Gillis using over 300

sample Sample or samples may refer to: Base meaning * Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set * Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal * Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of s ...

s of music by other artists to compose the album's fourteen tracks. He produced the album as one long piece of music, which was then subsequently broken into individual songs. Gillis felt that the album "works towards a bigger whole" and initially considered releasing the album as a single piece without track divisions, but ultimately decided against the idea, as he felt that "the end of the album would get so neglected, and if your favorite moment was a 30-second bit at the 40-minute mark, it would be really annoying to have that."

Release

On June 19, 2008, ''Feed the Animals'' was made available for download by Girl Talk's record label,

, sells ''Feed the Animals'' using a "

" system for non-seamless

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

files. Gillis explained that the goal behind the special payment system was to "make it easier for people to get their hands on the music", which he described as his "number one priority." Additional content was made available to paying users, including

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...

files and a one-file seamless

version of the album for those paying at least $5.00, and a CD copy for those paying at least $10.00. Non-paying users have to select a reason for doing so from a list of provided options: "I may donate later"; "I can't afford to pay"; "I don't really like Girl Talk"; "I don't believe in paying for music"; "I have already purchased this album"; "I don't value music made from sampling"; "I am part of the press, radio, or music industry", or "other reasons". The physical CD release of ''Feed the Animals'' was announced by Illegal Art with a slated release date of September 23, 2008. Manufacturing issues involving the production of the CDs, however, forced the release to be pushed back to a final release date of November 11, 2008. A vinyl LP release of ''Feed the Animals'' was released in 2020.

Reception

In their December 2008 issue, ''

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen appliance, kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsion, emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender ...

'' magazine named ''Feed the Animals'' as the second best album of 2008, behind only Lil Wayne's ''

Tha Carter III ''Tha Carter III'' is the sixth studio album by American rapper Lil Wayne, released on June 10, 2008, by Cash Money, Universal Motown & Young Money Entertainment. It follows a long string of mixtape releases and guest appearances on other hip h ...

''. In Australia, the album debuted at number 83 on the

ARIA Albums Chart The ARIA Charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling songs and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA became the offici ...

in February 2009.

Track listing

# "Play Your Part (Pt. 1)" – 4:45 # "Shut the Club Down" – 3:07 # "Still Here" – 3:57 # "What It's All About" – 4:15 # "Set It Off" – 3:42 # "No Pause" – 3:12 # "Like This" – 3:21 # "Give Me a Beat" – 4:12 # "Hands in the Air" – 4:20 # "In Step" – 3:23 # "Let Me See You" – 4:04 # "Here's the Thing" – 4:46 # "Don't Stop" – 2:58 # "Play Your Part (Pt. 2)" – 3:25

Charts

References

External links

''Feed the Animals''
at

* *
Analysis regarding songs sampled in the album
at Waxy.org {{Authority control 2008 albums Girl Talk (musician) albums Illegal Art albums Albums free for download by copyright owner Self-released albums Mashup albums Plunderphonics albums