"Coachella was the biggest show I have ever played. At first I was worried how it would translate, but then people just started jumping on stage and it was like a house party. Except with Perry Farrell and Paris Hilton dancing on stage with me." So says Pittsburgh-based cut-and-paste scientist, Gregg Gillis AKA Girl Talk.

His third album, the sample-crazy 'Night Ripper', caused a stereo meltdown when it was unleashed on the American public in 2006, and looks set to do the same when it's re-released in Europe later this year. A celebration of the last 30 years of pop music, it crams in a dazzling array of 250 samples from 167 artists, ranging all the way from Smokey Robinson, to Public Enemy, M.I.A, Neutral Milk Hotel and even Elton John in a dizzy, breathless 45 minutes. It defied potential lawsuits to become the party soundtrack of the summer. "We were expecting a cease and desist at the least. We didn't anticipate the LP would get this big." So much so, he was recently featured in Playgirl as one of their Men of the Year. "I wanted to go nude but my parents would have been disappointed in me."

But it's not all jailbird socialites and glam photoshoots for Gillis. He's also a keen advocate of the democratizing power of technology and appears in an upcoming documentary about copyright laws in the digital age, 'The Basement Tapes'. "I think the industry is trying to deal with CD sales plummeting, peer-to-peer file sharing, and their knee jerk reaction is to try and shut it down. But every kid uses photoshop and appropriates images, or remixes songs for parties. What we did with this record was recontextualize music into a new whole."

Positing himself "between Diplo and The Avalanches", Gillis has seen his Girl Talk project snowball thanks to the power of music blogs. "With Myspace and blogs, entertainment is in people's hands now. Blogs are as powerful as anything. You tend to question what's in magazines, who's writing it, what's their agenda, whereas with blogs it's very raw and realistic, just some kid who's passionate about music," he says.

All this attention means that Gillis is finally giving up his secret identity as biomedical engineer by day to focus on Girl Talk: "I am officially quitting my day job. People at work probably knew but were too embarrassed to call me out on it."

There are remixes for Simian Mobile Disco and Professor Murder due from his side project, Trey Told ‘Em, and a new release by the year's end. Expect more nudity and sheer pop mayhem when he hits European shores later in the year - so much more than a click-and-point laptop gig, he describes his shows as "very naked, very sweaty, very rock", sometimes ending with him screaming out the lyrics to Nirvana's 'Scentless Apprentice'. "The secret of a good party is fitting in as much chaos as possible without it actually imploding. It’s a great party when people are getting slightly damaged or I’m nearly knocked out."