[Music] Skrillex – My Name Is Skrillex
October 20, 2011
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Skrillex is, from what I could gather, some sort of icon for Dubstep. Sounding both utterly stereotypical, almost caricaturistic yet accessible enough for outsiders, if you want to know what’s with this new wubwubwub sound then Skrillex is probably your first place to look. However, on his first release, Skrillex was more of a house musician – Fidget House, to be specific. There is only one Dubstep song here (“Fucking Die”, whose remix goes back to the House sound), and while the wubwubwub is here, it’s over House beats. There’s also a slight glitched sound, the songs refusing to stick to a loop and have to add a new sound every 3 seconds and disposing of the old one (Only to bring it back for the next 6 seconds) and a few chipmunk vocals which sound terrible.
If this all sounds like a mess to you, it’s because it is. Skrillex is in fact Sonny, the previous lead singer of From First to Last. Considering his background, some people criticized him for “jumping on a trend” – which not only silly but misses the actual problem his background hints at. The music is awfully amateurish. It sounds as if Sonny listened to a few Prodigy records, listened to a bit of Dubstep and then went on to produce this. The wobbling base always sounds cool, but it never has a coherent rhythm. Its only a sound, without a tune. Try humming it, and then try humming like the wobbling synth from Crystal Method’s “Keep Hope Alive” and you’ll see the difference.
But the biggest problem with My Name Is Skrillex is how it slams. It has no pretense and all it wants do is be loud electronic and energetic music. That’s good, but you still need structure and a rich palette of sounds, and Skrillex has neither. Almost every song goes out of control with no sense of structure and thus losing its impact. Uncontrolled chaos can only be powerful for so long until the novelty wears off. The title track and “WEEKENDS!!!” have energy but without a coherent they become boring halfway through and even annoying. There’s also a lack of variety sounds, which makes it seem repetitive despite the fact Sonny probably tried to do the opposite. The wobbly base in “Fucking Die” is basically a slowed down version of the wobbling from the title-track. The vocals are the only thing that seperates “WEEKENDS!!!” and “Do Da Oliphant”.
To Sonny’s credit, he does approach the material with enough excitement. There’s no variety or structure or ambience, but atleast Sonny can slam, and that makes the title-track and “Fucking Die” worth at least one listen, and are the only ones that may worth more than more. So long as there is loud wobbling base, Skrillex is serviceable. All the flaws mentioned above are drowned out. It’s when he does the straight-up House the flaws appear. “Do Da Oliphant” is low-budget techno that reminds me why 90′s techno is so good, “WEEKENDS!!!” has a nice hook but loses direction but loses direction after one minute, and “With You, Friends” starts without any. Worse, that track is 6 minutes long. That makes for two songs out of six in this EP, and that’s not as very good sign (There’s also a remix of “Fucking Die” that takes it in the House direction and it’s okay but not worth discussing any further).
Here’s a metaphore to describe Skrillex. If The Prodigy’s way of slamming is working on making their hammer stronger and hitting at the spot where it’ll cause most damage, Skrillex just swings his hammer as hard as he can without care for aim or the quality of the weapon. That makes for a cool enough listening in small doses, and only when the bass wobbles. When the bass doesn’t wobble, it’s music to listen to and point out, with gloom and dread, how electronic music became this after Dubnobasswithmyheadman. If this sounds like a good idea to you, get the two mentioned tracks and forget the rest.
Highs: The wobbling bass
Lows: No structure, variety and thus it loses its impact pretty quickly
Rating: 2/5
