Thraed of Skrillex

My point, if I have one, is that if you compress layers upon layers of trash culture one onto the other sometimes what you get isn't just pure shit.

Sometimes you get White Zombie or Pitchshifter though. Not really sure where this all going.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0E0ynyIUsg

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

I remember a variant on this discussion at Mixmag in the late 90s re: happy hardcore, like, "This sounds fucking horrible and crass but I guess people thought that about rave 10 years ago so maybe this is actually great because the kids love it?" But no, it really was just horrible and crass. Sometimes the stuff that certain kids like and older critics don't isn't secretly avant-garde and radical after all. Not saying that Skrillex is as bad as happy hardcore but there's no blanket rule here and "I don't get it so I guess it must be great on some level" critical cringe isn't always helpful.

theres a middle ground too tho werent zep and black sabbath shitted on by critics at the time

Loved More Human Than Human when I was about 15, but nothing else Rob Zombie's ever done.

Pitchshifter, Senser and all those acts who tried to mix hard rock/metal and electronica failed terribly as they never managed to achieve the best of either element. Skrillex is interesting because it's the first purely electronic dance music (discounting industrial/EBM) that appeals directly to a traditionally rock-oriented market, and in doing so has managed that task considerably well.

"More Human Than Human" is on my short-list of entrance music should I ever need any (see also Deneice Williams' "Let's Hear It For The Boy").

im gonna say that his live show was a whole lot better than plenty of live shows ive been to by more 'respected' bands & that ppl def undersell a great live artist at their own peril esp in the post paying-for-cds world

I heard enough bizarre distorted noise when I was deejaying lowest common denominator electrohouse and dubstep to be pretty well immune to the affect, but the thing that I've found interesting about Skrillex is that he managed to shoehorn all that side chain compression/bitcrushed FM synth/ video game noise into fairly well written songs. I'm curious if he's going to try to be a songwriter or a musician who makes dance tracks, because its hard to do both. Particularly when you're the figurehead of the "new rave scene" in America.

Not looking forward to "proper songs" tbh. Pendulum were harmless enough until they added that horrible emo-lite singer to the mix. Skrillex is just left of mallcore for me not to mind his schtick too much.

it's the first purely electronic dance music (discounting industrial/EBM) that appeals directly to a traditionally rock-oriented market

You're joking, right?

Wouldn't that be Gary Numan? Or something roughly around the same time period?

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0WNbm1jz6A

gary numan doesn't really strike me as dance music tbh

True enough.

The Prodigy would be the first really big crossover of an electronic act into rock?

you're forgetting about the UK, dude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyoDbX1EkPQ

Well if we're talking about the difference between American and European markets, you just add something like 15 years onto the timeline for America.

Kraftwerk, Numan and New Order all started as rock bands and slowly went electronic, I was trying to think of someone who took the opposite route.

Moby.

Fatboy Slim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD8dZGffkzQ

Prodigy/Chems/Fatboy Slim circa 1997 the obvious precedent - John the Baptists to Skrillex's Jesus if you will. Though they would obviously be horrified by that.

He's a firestarter, twisted firestarter.

Kraftwerk, Numan and New Order all started as rock bands and slowly went electronic, I was trying to think of someone who took the opposite route.

― pattern loader, Tuesday, November 15, 2011 5:19 AM Bookmark

Skrillex was in a rock band tho.

Primal Scream kind of go back and forth

From First To Last, the Housemartins of their time

Xpost: So Skrillex would be rock->dubstep/proghouse->rock influenced crossover.

Prodigy/Chems/Fatboy Slim circa 1997 the obvious precedent - John the Baptists to Skrillex's Jesus if you will. Though they would obviously be horrified by that.

― Science, you guys. Science. (DL), Tuesday, November 15, 2011 8:37 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Horrified by the comparison to Skrillex or the Christian stuff.

?

Prodigy/Chems/Fatboy Slim circa 1997 the obvious precedent - John the Baptists to Skrillex's Jesus if you will. Though they would obviously be horrified by that.

― Science, you guys. Science. (DL), Tuesday, November 15, 2011

they've no reason to be horrified - they made enough terrible music between themselves

I'm fairly certain that if offered some kind of Skrillex collab the Prodigy members would be very enthusiastic. Anyone who wrote Smack My Bitch Up would.

http://theprodigyfanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/keith-flint.jpg

vs

http://s3.amazonaws.com/hottopic_shockhound_production/attachments/4498/skrillex.jpg

Undercut vs. inverse mohawk not even a fight really.

Well the inverse mohawk is a lot more practical if you're balding.

Strikes me that it doesn't have to be a choice of either of those two haircuts cos why not have both?

http://exclaim.ca/images/strapping_young_lad.jpg

well played

Kraftwerk - not exactly dance music, not exactly appealing directly to Rock (capital R) fans
Numan - same
New Order - again, it's not electronic music and it's more pop than rock
Moby - no. I mean, he made a rock album and he made electronic albums, but I don't think the two worlds converged. I don't think you got a lot of metalheads getting into Play.
Fatboy Slim, Chems etc - they had crossover appeal and some rock fans got into dance through them, but I don't think they were aiming squarely at a rock crowd.

Closest is the Prodigy, Fat Of The Land onwards, but still they got Gizz Butt to shove guitars all over their music and still came from a dance milieu. I should clarify I was talking about purely electronic dance music aimed at the hard rock market.

Skrillex's fanbase came to him via Deadmau5 as much as they did via screamo.

Numan in his Tubeway Army days definitely had a lot of crossover appeal to say, glam
I agree that Fatboy is probably the closest real "mainstream" thing we've had lately, especially as he tended to have a lot of "I can't believe he is intentionally ruining this" moments

Moby - no. I mean, he made a rock album and he made electronic albums, but I don't think the two worlds converged. I don't think you got a lot of metalheads getting into Play.

i don't know about metalheads (and don't know if it has to be metalheads to apply) but moby was big in the alternative rock crowd starting with revolver but well on into a lot of tracks from play, the local radio station wfhs would put him alongside smashing pumpkins, afghan whigs, better than ezra etc with no problem. all of that being the first music i was actively into in my head i'm fully accustomed to still thinking of moby as a "band" myself.

Blue Monday is electronic music, dog latin.

of course the US's historical relationship with dance music is quite different to the UK's which will change things. The people in the UK I know who follow him are all ex-nu-metallers (or their generic equivalent), but the US has always had that Go/Candy Rave thing which Skrillex is also very much a child of.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zsqQtsSZmd4/TbppJXDd_JI/AAAAAAAAAA8/vjldRUQdjZE/s1600/450px-Plur%2521.jpg

I think I parsed the previous post wrong when I mentioned Moby - I was talking about him as an artist who started making dance music and moved towards rock.

I put my ear closer to that Nice Sprites thing again the other day. Matt isn't wrong about his rhythms being a bit uninspired - most of the tracks stick to very simple half-step or 4/4 rhythms. I hadn't really noticed this before, because the rest of the music does have a number of twists and turns, "bits" coming in and out of the mix etc. I guess the beat anchors everything, and yeah compared to Aphex it's nowhere close. But I guess it's not meant to be IDM, it's big dumb rave music for emos so does it need to be complicated? I guess it would be a vast improvement if the beats were more exciting.

how popular is Skrillex in the UK? Metal Hammer are covering him (probably due to Korn connection, but it backs up what dog latin says about nu-metallers liking him)

There's a certain subsect of UK society who may as well and will forever be US emo-punk-metallers with tattoos, ear tubes and all that. Kerrang, being the most popular music publication in the UK (IIRC) means these guys proliferate throughout Britain and so there'll always be a huge market for angsty, driving, fratty rock over here. Then there's the dubstep connection - and of course a lot of dubstep kids are into Skrillex. It kind fo creates a mush of a subculture where hardcore kids hang out with rudeboys, with quite a big crossover. I can see Skrillex playing some pretty big shows over here.

kerrang covers (or used to) cypress hill and the prodigy so it wouldnt surprise me in the least if they covered skrillex.

i hope that korn album is a total flop. i dread to think of dubstep metal becoming the next big thing

ach, frankly I couldn't care less if it is or it isn't. The next big thing is bound to be schoot whatever it is so if it's dubstep metal it'll be about as effective in pissing me off as much as anything else. The Korn/Skrillex thing sounds kind of great for the first 30 seconds until Jonathan Davis starts doing his tortured millionaire thing, and then you realise it's just a patchwork where korn get their bit and skrillex gets his. Skrillex seems to have a bit of an ear for strong melodies - I genuinely wonder what the van dyke parks collab will sound like. It seems so incongruous, but kind of makes sense at the same time.