Thraed of Skrillex

I'm obviously not holding Come To Daddy up as any kind of paragon of groove or whatever just having a meanspirited pop at Skillrex here.

the point is, if Scooter can do a good imitation of what you do, you probably will not stick around for long

He's an ex-emo brostep producer - it's not really meant to be "groovy" (although I'm at pains to think of many groovy Aphex tracks either). If anything - and yeah I'm trying to contextualise rather than defend Skrillex here - he's got an incredible grasp of melodic arrangement, not to mention considerable production chops. Not sure what software/hardware he's using but just trying to get a powerful big-room multi-tiered sound like that without muddying up the mix is no mean feat. I don't really get what makes Skrillex any worse a producer than say Rustie who seems to garner a huge amount of props in credible circle. As I said in the OG brostep thread, part of me suspects that it's Skrillex's teenage appeal that marks him out in more "mature/mid-brow" music circles, when really the appeal is that it's meant to be nu-metal/rock pumped up to 11 with all the angsty 'tude taken out and an emphasis on fun times.

sorry that was xxposts

many of Aphex Twin's more straight-up techno tracks are very groovy.

this guy's shit has always just sounded like slowed-down dnb of the dj fresh school*, big riffs that are distorted and gnarled but still pretty bouncy, which has always been popular with a subset of american kids, but i guess the tempo and the fact that there's so much synth-y stuff on the radio already is what's helped him really cross over.

*except, yeah, somehow even less rhythmically interesting.

also cosign everyone who's said they get the appeal, want to like it, but ehhhhhh.

i'm depressed the Living End got brought up for a skrillah thread

come to daddy is a terrible record people wanting to rearrange their desk and hide it in a desk drawer because they didn't like that skrillrex shone a light on it and said 'I made one of those too'

he's got an incredible grasp of melodic arrangement

lol wut

I don't really get what makes Skrillex any worse a producer than say Rustie who seems to garner a huge amount of props in credible circle. As I said in the OG brostep thread, part of me suspects that it's Skrillex's teenage appeal that marks him out in more "mature/mid-brow" music circles, when really the appeal is that it's meant to be nu-metal/rock pumped up to 11 with all the angsty 'tude taken out and an emphasis on fun times.

i think rustie's a bit overblown myself but he's still got a handle on syncopation in beats vs skrillex's beat-you-over-the-head four on the floor WITH WHOMP style. people hating just because "the kids are into it" is always an option but just not the case in here (other than that so many of the kids love him he's constantly brough up such that we can bring up the valid reasons he's so terrible).

this shit is pretty awful

yeah I don't feel like Aphex has dated really well so I shudder to think about what this'll sound like in 2020. hell at least Squarepusher went all out trying to antagonize his audience, this shit is pop as hell

i don't really know anything about skrillex, but has this been mentioned yet?
“I had 40 musicians in a Capitol studio on a job that took me two weeks, 24/7, from before sunrise to well into the night. I worked very hard on what I hoped would be my best work. I did it for this guy by the name of Skrillex, who I’ve never heard of.”
-Van Dyke Parks, last month

o_O

it's next year's Loutallica, I'm tellin' ya.

except Lou Reed and Metallica were both fucking legends at points in their careers

kind of hearing Pendulum in this stuff

deej, are you still saying "cool story, bro"? That shit's on shirts at the mall.

― kashi west: late vegetarian (rustic italian flatbread), Monday, November 14, 2011 8:55 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

actually, it was on the shirt of a kid from the concert

also cosign everyone who's said they get the appeal, want to like it, but ehhhhhh.

― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Monday, November 14, 2011 1:44 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the live show experience was v. impressive & shouldn't be discounted. he has a good sense for building up tension and shifting moods at the right time / good sense of controlling the crowd.

i also think what people are saying about the rhythm on his tracks as cutting him a lot less credit than he deserves. as a live performer, his stuff does a lot of shifting between different rhythmic styles, which isn't typically my thing but IMO he does a much better job of it than diplo (having seen both of them DJ) (I recognize a lot of us dont like diplo either but i'm trying to compare djs of vaguely similar success levels) & the way he's stuck to consistent textures means that he can switch up rhythmic templates pretty easily w/out it seeming all that disorienting. he'll switch from a straight four on the floor, to a reggae feel, to a dubstep lurching feel, and manages to keep it all feel rather than like the all-over-the-place frankendance of the mid 00s, like all part of one movement / consistent style

i dont like the lurching rhythmic parts still, but i dont like that in 'respected' dubstep either so

blah i should have edited that

i think rustie's a bit overblown myself but he's still got a handle on syncopation in beats vs skrillex's beat-you-over-the-head four on the floor WITH WHOMP style. people hating just because "the kids are into it" is always an option but just not the case in here (other than that so many of the kids love him he's constantly brough up such that we can bring up the valid reasons he's so terrible).

― fauxmarc, Monday, November 14, 2011 2:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

fwiw this argument could go on down thru the ages w/ pedantic line-drawing, i'm sure lots of chicago house purists found problems w/ how the uk artists chose to interpret rave music -- im not saying your wrong, i didnt run out & buy a skrillex cd after seeing him live (although I would have paid to see him live again the next night) but its not like you can sidestep this stuff

i mentioned it in one of the other threads but i think the key to understanding skrillex, at least for me, was finding out that he was in a mallcore screamo band before going solo as skrillex. once i viewed his music through the lens of teenage angst rock of the early 2000s, it finally made sense to me. the song 'scary monsters and nice sprites makes it most apparent imo': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSeNSzJ2-Jw

the singing style at the beginning of the song and again at the final bridge are ripped straight out of the screamo playbook. listen to the drum beat syncopation throughout the song (and especially during the wobble breakdowns): those aren't twostep beats or anything out of the electronic music styles (save for maybe some dnb), those are mall metal breakdown beats! just imagine those beats being played with a double-bass drum and the wobble bass being a chuggachugga guitar riff and you have a straight up screamo breakdown.

so i can totally understand why teenagers love this shit because it's teen rock n' roll, and seems like a logical progression from the screamo/warped tour scene. i also think he can be considered in the same ilk as those crabcore bands that we were lolling at a few years ago except maybe a bit more, dare i say, 'sophisticated'

that being said, i totally dig brostep in the same way i like paramore and can get nostalgic hearing bad screamo: it reminds me of some of the terrible music i listened to as a teen and having fun and going to shows etc

the environment of the shows is way, way more rave-y than screamo-y, though. there are tons of E'd out bros, glowsticks/bodypaint, etc

yea, im kinda pissed i didn't hear about the two shows in chicago this weekend until they were sold out, i totally wouldve gone

but the ravey environment makes sense to me, at least, cuz at the same time i was listening to these questionable rock bands, i was listening to aphex twin and watching movies like Groove and Go and wishing i could go to a rave

i think rustie's a bit overblown myself but he's still got a handle on syncopation in beats vs skrillex's beat-you-over-the-head four on the floor WITH WHOMP style. people hating just because "the kids are into it" is always an option but just not the case in here (other than that so many of the kids love him he's constantly brough up such that we can bring up the valid reasons he's so terrible).

― fauxmarc, Monday, November 14, 2011 2:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

fwiw this argument could go on down thru the ages w/ pedantic line-drawing, i'm sure lots of chicago house purists found problems w/ how the uk artists chose to interpret rave music -- im not saying your wrong, i didnt run out & buy a skrillex cd after seeing him live (although I would have paid to see him live again the next night) but its not like you can sidestep this stuff

― Creedance House Mafia (D-40), Monday, November 14, 2011 3:32 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

addendum: i totally do the same thing w/ Drake in the hip-hop threads. middle class navel gazing is the sound of now for hip-hop & i dont enjoy it & i've come up w/ perfectly reasonable reasons why, but at some level, i think we just have to admit the ground has shifted

When I listen to the Scary Monsters EP what I hear is Pendulum/Noisia dnb mixed with post Justice bloghouse with a tiny little bit of Venetian Snares style hyperactive programming chops. It appeals to the same part of me that liked Rage Against The Machine and At The Drive In when I was 16-19. There's probably also a distant relationship with Dj Distance's Korn-step in 2007-2010.

I was never really into screamo/mall punk, I'm guessing that I was too old by the time it rolled around. So what I'm saying is basically, entire thread OTM so far.

There is one other element in there, a healthy serving of Kaskade style progressive house.

I don't think Skrillex would have ever gotten the attention he has without the ability to appeal to very mainstream dance tastes at the beginning of his career, his early remixes aren't particularly dubstep sounding if I remember correctly. For everyone hating on this, just think of what a thoroughly bizarre mix of musical styles this is. This music couldn't have existed even 5 years ago, much less have received a positive welcome from the kids.

Shouldn't forward thinking music be considered completely crass and tasteless by 20-30 somethings?

fwiw this argument could go on down thru the ages w/ pedantic line-drawing, i'm sure lots of chicago house purists found problems w/ how the uk artists chose to interpret rave music -- im not saying your wrong, i didnt run out & buy a skrillex cd after seeing him live (although I would have paid to see him live again the next night) but its not like you can sidestep this stuff

― Creedance House Mafia (D-40), Monday, November 14, 2011 3:32 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

addendum: i totally do the same thing w/ Drake in the hip-hop threads. middle class navel gazing is the sound of now for hip-hop & i dont enjoy it & i've come up w/ perfectly reasonable reasons why, but at some level, i think we just have to admit the ground has shifted

― Creedance House Mafia (D-40), lunes 14 de noviembre de 2011 20:06

sounds like a suggestion to mostly just view skrillex in a live rave context instead of any critical beat-oriented nerding, which i'm fine with as i obvi don't think he can stand up to the latter. but if the ground has shifted, it's shifted from what - the tiesto/keoki/etc type rave scenes of back when? i mean those sucked too - if that was the starting point the ground may have shifted but still within a continuum of suckage.

re: the screamo angle - yeah it gets brought up frequently and i still don't buy it as an excuse of context needed to "get" skrillex, as mentioned his band was deep in the mallcore end of the pool, he was derivative to begin with - so he took his bad style and applied it elsewhere. it's still ehhhhhh.

Tell you what, to compare this to another DJ who does vocal dubstep tracks and is considered to be an impressive live act: I like this way more than James Blake.

The day that dubstep appeals solely to IDM nerds and indie people is the day its dead entirely. And I say that as someone who listened to a lot of IDM (obviously).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91bqgMkxmv0

Not arguing that James Blake doesn't have a really rowdy live act, just can't stand the sound of his voice.

You aint the only one that wish he'd stfu more often.

This music couldn't have existed even 5 years ago, much less have received a positive welcome from the kids.

Shouldn't forward thinking music be considered completely crass and tasteless by 20-30 somethings?

This is OTM. Yeah, it could have existed a few years ago but not really had the appeal. As such, Skrillex is a sort of apex point where all these disparate styles (all loved particularly by teenagers) seem to converge to make this ultimate teenage music.

Does Skrillex have a defining tune? Most big dance guys build their rep on a signature anthem but though I've read about him as a live/DJing phenomenon I've not come across an equivalent to Da Funk or Chemical Beats. Not saying he doesn't have one - purely my ignorance.

Signature anthem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSeNSzJ2-Jw&feature=player_embedded

^^^ thats his big one. the track that started this thread was one he played at the party's peak. 'i am skrillex' is big as well

I wonder if that cupstacker knows about the sample.

in the original post? its an official remix. imo the original is kind of weak tbh

the original is superior to the remix in every way i know.

Where did I read that quote about how the basslines sounded like "an angry robot having sex with a motorcycle"?

I dunno, but I wouldn't trust anyone who said that they didn't want to hear music that sounds like that.

Cheers. That one's more obviously dubstep than I expected. If someone told me it was a more critically respected UK producer I wouldn't be surprised. Cinema is more like the corny, cross-genre sound I imagined.

Oh, that'll be because it's a remix of Benny Benassi.

The funny thing for me about all of this is when I talked to a local DJ who plays some really intense grinding tracks and mixes it with a bunch of pop, he hates Skrillex so much.

Not even good enough for a brostep DJ.

Skrillex must be the lowest common denominator in a whole bunch of things. There's that Japanese ex-metal guy too, Borgore (or Boregore?), and you can tell he's heavily influenced by death metal. He has an EP/mini album called "Borgore Ruined Dubstep".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpejnx3ZBvE

http://www.deejay.de/images/xl/7/9/45579.jpg

Shouldn't forward thinking music be considered completely crass and tasteless by 20-30 somethings?

― pattern loader, Tuesday, 15 November 2011 01:23 (10 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

NO. JUST NO.

20-30 somethings have been traditionally cool with forward thinking music for the past 60 years if its dope. Only when it is shit and teenager-y like Skrillex or hair metal idk have 20-30 somethings found it to be crass and tasteless. (Also, this isn't even innovative music - we are fucking discussing afx twin more in this thread than we are the rapey looking hipster.)

i totally didn't get that skrillex was being referred to as "forward-thinking"

xpost When punk came along the music press was inundated with letters from jaded hard rock fans moaning about a lack of Deep Purple and Quo. When grunge kicked off, all I remember hearing from the older crowd on TV/radio was how "it just sounds like a guy whimpering in a corner until someone whacks him round the head with a frying pan for the chorus". And I'm sure rave music pissed off a fair few 20-30 somethings ("it's not even proper music - just bosh bosh bosh and kid's TV samples"