Earlier this month many of the music blogs were talking about how mashup master Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis) planned to release his latest album “Feed The Animals” in a Radiohead “pay what you like” style. I checked out the website and immediately thought, “feck the business model – this record’s got a great sleeve!”. I emailed GT’s record label Illegal Art to find out who was responsible, and they kindly put me in touch with Brooklyn, NY based designer Andrew Strasser who agreed to conduct a swift email interview for Sleevelessness.


Slv Great sleeve for Girl Talk’s “Feed The Animals”. What’s the story behind the cover?

A.S. Behind every cover there is a story, haha... There are two parts to Feed The Animals – the title, and the image that we ended up with. I do stage visuals when Girl Talk goes on large tours or plays at big festivals, and all of the equipment was seriously just getting eaten up by all of the comotion on stage. We had large inflatable palm trees and halloween spider archways, all from very suburban on-line inflatable stores. As soon as the inflatables would go up, the chanting impatient crowd would just get a hold of it somehow, and we’d just watch a palm tree get sucked right into the organic mass of Girl Talk fans... never to be seen again. When you go on a 30 day tour, and watch this happen every day, you start feeling like you are going on some kind of an expedition to feed the hungriest of animals (we’re animals too for going along with it).

The cover itself does not relate to “Feed the Animals”. I was doing visuals with Gregg in Las Vegas when he opened for Gnarls Barkley, Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, and others for this very exciting and very strange Chinese New Year celebration. The crowd was SEATED, and was mostly a hip hop crowd, very mainstream. There was an MC and of course, he’s going to pick on the sorest thumb of the show, which would be Girl Talk... He kicks it off with “so why are you called Girl Talk anyway, what kind of a name is that?”... I think that he was kind of scarred from having to answer that question in front of so many skeptics. The solution was to do a subtle name change from Girl Talk to GT - not an official name change, just a nickname. Gregg originally wanted the GT flames on a brick wall, but I suggested a more ET/Home Alone kind of image, something that references the suburbs more.


Slv Where is the house? Did you take the photo yourself?

A.S. I was in Virginia Beach visiting my family, and I grabbed my moms 6 megapixel snapshot camera and did some long exposures on the house across the street when they had only one light on, and that became the house. Somehow the shot came out perfect.


Slv Did you really set the grass on fire?

A.S. We were really aiming to set a big lawn on fire and actually do it, but the logistics were absolutely bo-bo, so we didn’t do that. I did a micro scale version of the GT on fire with some twigs and lighter fluid, with help from my lovely sister Dana, and our great friend Lisa Ramsey (who was originally going to be a silhouette in the lit window of the house). We preferred nobody in the shot eventually.

The twigs overlaid on the grass was a good first start, but it didn’t look LARGE it made the house look like a scaled down model. I then turned to fire rendering techniques from some really tacky and cheesy websites where they teach you Photoshop tricks, like how to write your name out in fire, or in gold. I took this knowledge and went really far with it - I embellished the flame with some real shots of fire from our barbecue grill from memorial day (my dad was squirting tons of lighter fluid into our backyard grill).


Slv When did you first realise you wanted to be a designer?

A.S. I don’t want to be a designer. I want to be a musician. I am working on my own album right now.


Slv How did you get your first break? (e.g. the first piece of design work that you actually gave a shit about)

A.S. I started in middle school, someone punched me in the stomach for wearing a Mossimo shirt in the halls and I was so infuriated that I couldn’t wear a shirt, that I started researching ringer t-shirts (very skater style at the time). I took a picture of the tide bottle with a 1 megapixel camera (that was a lot at the time) and went over the words TIDE in paintbrush to make it say ZINE. then i did the same with a Chinese takeout box.

I made about 30 shirts and sold them all to the hottest girls in my middle school through a top secret mole in my math class. He had the in.


Slv How did you first get involved with Greg Gillis (AKA Girl Talk)?

A.S. He used to see me around in the cafeteria in college and vice versa – he looked like Rivers Cuomo and I looked like some big fat nerd who tucked his shirt in and wore a tie every day (this has greatly changed, now both of us have beards and we wear ugly clothes all the time like a bunch of hippies).

We eventually hung out once with our friends Mike Ray (who is redoing the Illegal Art website and brand with me) and Alex Preston (who is now in the band Mittens on Strings and makes incredible hand made shirts). I remember that night begging for them not to shave a Ninja Turtle face in my hair (they gave me a haircut the first time i met them and we hung out).


Slv Where do you work and what are you working on this week?

A.S. I work at home, in front of Google Spreadsheets, managing my clients. This week I’m working on my album, and doing some promotional flyers and banners for a Big Gay Cruise in Fire Island – should be fun! I also attended an event on Monday night for my friend Jeremy Parker’s record release party (Tha Pumpsta), I wore my costume (Turns out Andrew is also a performance artist - check out Bad Brilliance for more info).


Slv What records are you listening to right now?

A.S. Lil Wayne + Feed The Animals is the heavy duo right now.


Slv You wake up in Brooklyn, you’ve had 1,000,000 beers last night and a magic badger offers you any item of food you like – what would it be?

A.S. Nachos with cheese, ground beef, strips of beef, burger meat, cow beefs, pork, pork beefs, raw chicken, dutch chicken, deep fried halved radishes soaked in duck fat, sour cream, guacamole, blue cheese dressing, crab meat lumps, cheddar cheese, nacho cheese and drizzled with lime and tequila and flame torched for like 3 seconds or so.

You can check out lots more of Andrew’s work at his website including some excelllent photography.



Strasser also did the above cover for White Williams’ “Smoke” – you can check out the intriguing story behind it at Paper Thin Walls.