Kat Says: “Skrillex Is Back! Did He Ever Leave? The Legend Continues”
I wrote about the mighty rise of Skrillex, and his continuing legacy and influence.
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Hi Friends!
Woah, listen. Ya hear that? Just four days into the new year, Skrillex dropped the hottest tune of 2023—which was in turn the hottest ID of 2022—then he dropped another one, and another one. He’s got like three more singles coming in the next two weeks, none of which are the release of his insane collab with motherfucking Mr. Oizo and Missy Elliot!
Can you imagine a cooler trio? I simply can not!
All this musical mayhem is in lead-up to Skrillex’ forthcoming sophomore album, a title for which has not been released, and it all started with a Boiler Room in London six months ago.
First teased in Fred Again..’s instant-classic BR set, “Rumble” is the experimental sonic drop heard round the world. Word quickly spread that the song was a partnership between Fred Again.., Skrillex and Four Tet, featuring a monster of a vocal from English grime MC and producer Flowdan.
Now that “Rumble” has seen official release (garnering 18,514,432 plays on Spotify and 1.8 million plays on YouTube in its first 19 days), we see that Four Tet does not truly feature on the innovative chune. Skrillex clarified recently that, while he was in the room at the time of its making, Four Tet mostly worked as an “executive producer,” ensuring Skrillex and Fred didn’t “fuck it up.”
“Rumble” is the kind of song that signals a real shift in music culture, sounding familiar and entirely new all at once. Its deep blue bass booms are built to shake your cavities, and the textured layers of sound—specifically that rewound mechanical ghost flicker at the pre-hook breakdown—catapult the art of sound design to new low-end heights.
This song does the impossible by creating a catchy earworm without a single melodic element, crafting any sense of musicality from pitched rhythms and percussive bass alone. Okay, there’s one vocal sing-song moment, but that’s not the part that keeps you coming back, and that is W-I-L-D.
It’s a sign of fresh things to come, and the harbinger of perhaps the single most anticipated comeback in modern electronic music (given that we all know Daft Punk was never really going to tour again, sorryyyyyyy).
While Skrillex never made a hiatus statement or pulled an LCD Soundsystem-style career pause, the last few years have felt distinctly Skrillex-less—which is strange, because he released multiple singles every year of his supposed absence.
Maybe it’s because he wasn’t gracing lineups (which, remember, no one was during COVID) or dropping full albums that created this odd and false sense of Skrillex scarcity, but that just shows how powerful the Skrillex mythos has become, which begs the question:
How does one become a living legend?
The first time I heard about Skrill was November of 2010, from my buddy and then-roommate Joel. We were in our living room, and he was digging through Beatport trying to find weapons for his upcoming DJ set.
“Yo, this dude Skrillex has eight of the top 10 tracks on Beatport right now.”
Wait? What? Who? It was true. This 22 year old sprung up out of seemingly nowhere and dropped an EP on deadmau5’s label, and every single fucking one of those songs was dominating the charts, which meant pretty much every DJ in the world had just bought them.
Its title a fun gamer pun on Bowie’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites combined chip-tune quirks with the manic glitches of Wolfgang Gartner’s complextro sound, all the while turning dubstep’s genre-defining wub-dubs into explosive car crash noises. It was on the level of a Michael Bay-directed Transformer’s climax, some real Gundam mech-battle type shit.
“I want to kill everybody in the world,” the third track sang in an adorable baby voice. “Oh wee, oh-wee-oh-wee-oh, I want to eat your heart.”
Um, yeah, hi. Get in the car, we’re changing the world.
Further Reading: ‘My Name Is Skrillex’ Turns 8 Today & It’s Even Better Than You Remember (Billboard Dance, 2018)
Four months earlier, Skrillex introduced himself with a free EP on Soundcloud called My Name Is Skrillex. I wrote about its lasting legacy for Billboard on the eight-year anniversary of its release, and I go more into his backstory there.
TL;DR: Skrillex is Sonny Moore. He grew up in California’s Bay Area (it’s more complicated, but this is the short version) and dropped out of school at 16 when he found out he was adopted, choosing to channel his teen angst (which has a body count [Google it]) into music.
He started singing in the screamo band From First To Last and had a lot of success with that. He somehow met the guys in Noisia who taught him how to make music on his computer (and basically be one of the best in-the-box producers that exists), and he crashed on his friend 12th Planet’s couch. Then he made My Name Is Skrillex. Then everything changed.
When I call Skrillex a “game changer,” I don’t mean it hyperbolically. These two EPs quite honestly changed what people thought “dubstep” was. It upset a lot of people. Just look at this 2010 review in Resident Advisor. Andrew Ryce is, uh, very concerned. He literally writes “this music does a dangerous disservice if it's perceived as representative of ‘dubstep’ to an audience that has never come upon it before.”
Musical neckbeards have never shut up about this. Just look at the title of this wildly popular (and very good) YouTube documentary on the genre:
All My Homies Hate Skrillex isn’t ultimately anti-Skrill, but it does show how his influence (and that of others) pushed American dubstep into the direction of harder and snottier sound design competitions, until you get an artist called Snails who describes his own music as “vomit step,” and people who listen to “dubstep” are basically aggressive bros and dirty men who look like they’ll give you date rape drugs or steal your laptop at the after party.
Look, I don’t make the rules, I just observe reality.
(I’m just playing, bass heads, you know I love you)
Suffice to say, Skrillex was immediately divisive, and when you’ve got someone making that many waves and starting that many conversations, you’ve got a fucking star in the making.
When Skrillex came to Gainesville in February of 2011, I had to actually beg the editor of the student-run paper to let me interview him.
Further Reading: DJ Skrillex to play at The Vault (The Independent Alligator, 2011)
“Dude, please. He’s the biggest thing in dance music right now. He’s going to be a fucking legend, I promise you right now.”
Can you even imagine it?! LOL
That show was fucking INSANE. Just look at this video my buddy Keenan uploaded (hi Keenan!!). Kids are throwing themselves around the warehouse and screaming for the chaos. It was the volcanic eruption of a generation ready to party its way out of The Great Recession. We were the monsters. We were the sprites.
So what did Skrillex do with his newfound fame? He started a label and named it after his favorite book, Watership Down. OWSLA launched in September of 2011 with the release of an EP called Spitfire. It was the official debut of some 18 year old from North Carolina named Porter Robinson.
(If you’re reading this newsletter, you probably know Porter has also grown to become one of the most influential producers of the last decade, shifting the electronic music landscape twice in a row with his debut LP Worlds and his Virtual Self alias.)
In October of 2012, Skrillex joined Diplo and A-Track in the launch of a YouTube channel called Potato Will Eat You that is, like, really hard to describe but was very cool at the time. A month later, he released the insanely-cool, playable, 8-bit RPG Skrillex Quest which was soundtracked and inspired by Skrill’s musical catalog.
Further Reading: Skrillex Quest, the Dubstep Video Game: An Extremely Detailed Breakdown (Miami New Times, 2013)
That next summer in 2013, he created Nest HQ. It was a music blog and content platform that actually paid its journalists a fair wage and commented on things even outside the Skrillex verse. It was funded by Skrillex and OWSLA, and it only fell apart four years ago or so. That was an incredibly fucking solid thing for a producer to do.
And that’s it. That’s the thing. Skrillex is a super nice guy. It’s a joke among dance music obsessives and industry insiders to say “Oh, you mean Sonny?” when someone brings up Skrillex, because everyone who has ever met him kind of feels like his friend.
Remember how I interviewed him for The Alligator in 2010? I interviewed him four years later alongside Boys Noize for Coachella’s magazine, a day after the duo debuted their collaborative alias Dog Blood at Ultra Music Festival.
I brought up my previous interview with Skrill (I mean, Sonny?) during the Q&A, and after I turned my recorder off, he went up to a member of his team and was like “This is Kat! She’s really cool. I knew I’d met her before, she interviewed me a few years ago.”
When I ran into him almost a year later on the deck of Holy Ship 2014, he immediately was like “Hey! How are you? I love your new hair. Do you want the rest of this spliff?” And then two months later in a crowded room in Miami he was like, “Oh hey! It’s so nice to see you again!”
I don’t really know Skrillex. I’m not Sonny’s friend, but the man that is actually Skrillex radiates a genuine warmth, and a palpable love for people and music. It’s a very rare quality in a superstar, and I’m convinced that’s why he’s done so well in the professional international music scene. That’s why he’s collaborated with everyone from Diplo to Ed Sheeran, Missy Elliot to The Doors, Knife Party, Kaskade, Hikaru Utada and J Balvin, and no one blinks an eye or wonders “how does that work?”
That’s why he could pull off the revitalization and solidification of Justin Bieber’s adult pop career; grab a Grammy nom with Rick Ross; start a cultural meme by Tweeting an Aphex Twin song; and generally shift his musical style any multitude of times throughout his 13 year career, incorporating his screeching noise into chart-topping pop hits, club-shaking bass drops, hard-hitting house tunes and soulful sing-alongs alike.
Starting a super trio with seemingly disparate luminaries Fred Again.. and Four Tet is a welcome next chapter but not altogether surprising. Whenever Skrillex does make a sound, it can be felt ringing in the air for thousands of miles and many years to come.
Maybe the reason the moments between his releases feel a bit empty is because the moments he’s active feel so all-encompassing.
When Mr. Moore won his first Grammy in 2012 for his landmark remix of Benny Benassi’s “Cinema,” he didn’t approach the moment as if it were about him. Rather, it was a moment about the whole scene, its history and its legends.
“Everyone in the EDM community, this means a lot to us,” he said in his acceptance speech. “There’s a lot of people that have been here before us doing what we’ve been doing. I think Justice † should have won a Grammy. I think Daft Punk should have won Grammies, but it's cool that now this year it's going to open doors for everyone. There’s labels out there been doing what we’ve been doing for a long time, like Dub Police and Never Say Die, the list goes on—all the Croydon dub guys that started this all in 2003, it's crazy.
“I remember talking to Dieselboy one day,” he continues. “He was telling me that ‘all the boats rise with the water’ so—this is cool. I’m going to stop talking now.”
And on that note! So will I 🙂
Alright! There you have it, my essay on Skrillex. If you choose to join the paid tier of this newsletter (or perhaps you already are a paying supporter?!?!?!), you’ll get exclusive readership privileges to my full interview with Dog Blood (that’s Skrillex and Boys Noize, remember?) from my 2013 issue of Coachella magazine.
This interview was never digitized, and the magazine was only available to those who were on-site (and they mailed me one. I didn’t go to Coachella until 2017), so it’s very exclusive content. I plan to share a full PDF version and write out the Q&A in text format so you can enjoy how-so-ever you wish. If you don’t join the paid tier, you won’t see it! That’s the breaks!
This was another long one, but rather than skip the new music section, I’m gonna rapid-fire through it and show you my favorite tracks from the last few weeks, limiting myself to just one sentence per song so you can catch “the vibe.”
Absolutely Necessary
(This is the part where I share songs that are so good, they’re absolutely necessary to listen to. That’s it. That’s the bar.)
I made two Spotify playlists for this section that you can follow: one weekly playlist updated with just the new stuff every week, and one cumulative playlist that will host every song I pick ever (until Spotify tells me it's full). Check them out! I made them for you—and me, but mostly you.
Skrillex, Fred Again.., Flowdan - “Rumble”
I literally just wrote a whole essay about this track, basically, so go read the above.
Amtrac - “Heard Me Right”
An invigorating sing-along from my favorite Kentucky boy, spiced up with vintage synth sounds and cinematic atmosphere.
Kaleena Zanders, Shift K3y - “V I B R A T I O N”
The ‘90s Eurotrash scene just came back to life and Zanders brought the most powerful vocal this side of “Rhythm is a Dancer.”
Yaeji - “For Granted”
Yaeji is back, and she’s serving a bit of Thom Yorke dissociation with a side of drum’n’bass.
ATRIP - “All Night”
Jumpy Adderall highs meet the wee hours of space-sleep where you lay in bed tossing and turning but generally feel pretty good.
Kah-Lo, Karma Fields - “It Girl” (Warner Case Remix)
Groovy lounge house drawn out over a starry sky fantasy.
Millionyoung - “I Knew”
Hazy indie dance funk dipped in the romance of chocolate-covered strawberries.
Sohmi - “Only One”
You just wrapped up a long day and saw house guests out the door after a week-long stay, and you’re lowering yourself into a warm bath and there are candles lit throughout the room.
Classixx - "Bird of Prey" Feat. Joe Keefe
A jazzy cover of Natalie Prass' song by the same name with a distinct feel as if Paul Simon were somehow involved (it’s the vocals).
Leonardo Das Cabrio - "Le Homard" Feat. Boki, Fara 46
The walking bassline just took a right turn down Rue de Groove, a totally made-up street in the Paris of my mind.
SG Lewis, Charlotte Day Wilson, Channel Tres - "Fever Dreamer"
Soft disco popsicles melting in your mouth.
Tensnake, Drama - "Rooftop"
It might not be summer in the US, but it’s summer in Australia (none of these artists are from Australia, lol), and it’s a sweet summer evening wherever this song plays.
Okay. I’ve been working on this newsletter for the last six hours and had a baby anxiety attack in the middle of it, so I’m done lol. I love you all so much.
Please consider joining the paid tier of the newsletter. If you do, you can read my full interview with Boys Noize and Skrillex from that Coachella Magazine on Wednesday. It’s a print-only feature! I dug it up from my archives! Yay!
Thanks for tuning into my newsletter. Listen to the playlists on Spotify. One is updated weekly with all the songs from each edition. The other is cumulative with all the updates ever!
so frickin' entertaining :)