Girl Talk and Grand Buffet to put Station Square Amphitheater into dancing frenzy

For the uninitiated, a Girl Talk concert can be a life-changing experience.

To be one of hundreds of sweaty bodies pressed against one another for up to two hours of a constant dancing frenzy set to the mashed-up pop song beats that Gregg Gillis — the man behind Girl Talk — spins faster than a theme park ride is perhaps unlike any other concert experience imaginable.

On July 31, Girl Talk, a Pittsburgh native, will join similar artists and take his act to the largest venue he has ever headlined — the Station Square Amphitheater.

“It has a distinctly different feel now that it is not in an indoor skating rink,” Gillis said, referring to his last local show at Club Gravity in Cheswick, Pa.

After returning from a European tour and a string of musical festivals — Bonnaroo and Rothbury, to name a few — Gillis said he is excited about continuing what has been “one of the best summers of [his] life.

“It’s been cool. I finished up [his latest album, Feed the Animals] last summer, and that was crazy,” he said. “This summer has been pretty casual. The festivals are great. I love checking out other bands and having friends join me for the experience.”

He recalled a set at the Rothbury Festival in Michigan where the audience, after having endured a long day of performances, contiProxy-Connection: keep-alive

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ed to rock on at 2:30 a.m. for Gillis’ set.

“I never want the audience to be chill, but I don’t want people to be so aggressive that it’s annoying for everyone else. [The Rothbury audience] was very large, and because it was a few weeks after Michael Jackson’s death, I played a bunch of my stuff that sampled his songs, and it definitely resonated with the crowd,” he said.

Gillis said that though playing in his hometown has a different feel now than it did when he rose to popularity in 2006, he still enjoys returning and playing for friends who watched him when he only played for “crowds of 15 people.”

He said his friends “have a unique perspective on me that not many people have. They know I’m playing bigger shows now. Ultimately, everything has come from being out of Pittsburgh, so it’s a very cool thing to come back home.”

Gillis also said he’s excited to show the Pittsburgh audience what he has been working on recently, even though he has no plans to stop performing to put out an album soon.

“Half the material in the concert is new stuff,” he said. “I’m on pace to make an album every two years, and I don’t care if I make it quicker or longer. I am constantly working on stuff. I don’t think I would be completely comfortable with just stopping [the shows] and trying to pump out an album.”

In addition to Girl Talk, the concert will feature bands that Gillis said he helped select to make the concert a sort of “mini-festival.”

He said, “A lot of the bands are people that I’m friends with or have played with back in the day, so there’s a lot of awesome music happening in Pittsburgh right now.”

Some of these artists include Modey Lemon, Centipede E’est, Don Caballero and the hip-hop duo Grand Buffet, comprised of Jarrod Weeks (Lord Grunge) and Jackson O’Connell-Barlow, who uses multiple stage names.

The duo, who toured with Girl Talk this past fall, said it is very excited for the show and expect crazy things from the crowd, with O’Connell-Barlow citing in an e-mail interview “anywhere between head-nodding and propulsive ejaculation and/or levitation” as appreciated behaviors.

“We try to put on a balls-to-the-wall show, no matter what the crowd is like. I guess I prefer that the crowd not throw s**t at us. That’s about it,” Weeks said.

Weeks also said he has never been disappointed by the number of awesome bands and steady stream of good music in the Pittsburgh music scene and that it would “make Pittsburgh attractive for outside artists. It might also make them jealous, but f*** ’em.”

The duo has only good things to say about Gillis, with whom it has been acquainted for quite some time.

“We’ve known Gillis since the days when you had to midi-chain at least 12 PCs together to conduct a proper mash-up. He is one of the most chill and delightful individuals I’ve had the pleasure of knowing,” O’Connell-Barlow said.

Weeks echoed those sentiments, adding that he was excited about playing at a venue he used to frequent as “a youngin’ when it was the IC

Light Amphitheater.” He said he doesn’t expect anything from the show other than a good time for all involved.

O’Connell-Barlow, however, made one tempting allusion to a possible surprise.

“One should never confirm nor deny surprises, but I am hoping to transform into pure light,” he said.

To those attending the concert: Bring sunglasses.