I would have never really expected to review a musical release as part of what I do here at Wavepusher, since my plan for this blog was always more of a focus on tools for sound design and music making from a personal experience perspective. I would at least have started with Tsuruda, if I was to start doing album reviews as such. But when someone like Sonny Moore a.k.a. Skrillex – whether I like his music or not – goes out and releases an album like “FUCK U SKRILLEX YOU THINK UR ANDY WARHOL BUT UR NOT!!<3”, consisting of 34 interconnected tracks, I have suddenly come to realize: Sonny has just done us all a big favor. At least those of us who procrastinate, or should we say “study” to our defense, rather than actually finishing music. And he’s made it look and sound rather effortless too (give it a listen at the bottom of this article).
On a string
His latest album consists of 34 little themes, basically theme loops like the ones we all get stuck on for 8, 16 or whatever amount of bars, and listen to until boredom hits. Many of us have hundreds of unfinished tracks, and Skrillex just lifted 34 of his old and new material and finished it off in a “one take” kind of way. The album can be listened to in a continuous stream for 46 minutes, along the way peppered with numerous collaborations and cheeky voice work, which I’ll refrain from commenting on, other than mentioning a spat with Atlantic Records. That part of music is really not what I’m interested in. But the accomplishment of doing something as simple as linking tracks like this and giving them value as a string of sound bytes, is pretty darn clever – and pretty engaging for the listener as well.
On a table
I listened to “FUCK U SKRILLEX YOU THINK UR ANDY WARHOL BUT UR NOT!!<3” in one go, it was such an easy thing to do. There were no breaks, no tune was too long. It was kinda fun! And obviously Skrillex has some skills in the sound design department as well as control over genres like bass, halftime, dnb, hip-hop and generic EDM if you really want to label things. I suspect heavy use of Serum 2 and predict he could have easily have had early access to it before the recent surprise release of the plugin just weeks ago. But there’s also some heavy processing and rhythmic elements I haven’t really heard put together like this before – and that’s coming from a guy who would rather listen to Amon Tobin and AFX than any ‘millions of listeners’ media boosted EDM artist on Spotify or wherever.
They are us
I’ll admit that I like Skrillex’ solo tracks the most on this one, some of the collabs seem “just for show” and mostly too short for both parties – the G Jones track Druids did not serve Jones justice at all, for instance. In contrast Biggy Wap with Wuki is surprisingly well done. And Gulab XX with Naisha goes hard and nods to crafters like Mr. Bill and DMVU. But I’ll give Skrillex credit for just going in there and tearing things up, even if it’s just for half a minute or two at a time. Knowing he is a cunning Ableton tweaker, I would guess Skrillex either both mixed and mastered the album himself too, or at least had a heavy handed input to its direction. So this is really what people like us should be looking at. A no bull take on a workflow to let more music out of the folders.
The 8-bar loop dilemma is now an album by Skrillex dissolving that very same dilemma. Pretty colorful – just like Andy Warhol. It even has loads of girls.
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The album is up everywhere with per track numbering, or use this free for all Soundcloud piece demonstrating the full, connected mixtape feel:
