Drop the Bass and Watch it Splat: Skrillex's 'Recess' Review

Skrillex
Recess
Asylum Records / Big Beat Records / OWSLA / Atlantic Records
3/10

Skrillex’s music is a lot like cheap alcohol: it’s not appealing in the slightest, it tastes awful, but you can manage to convince yourself that it isn’t so bad when you have had enough of it. That pretty well sums up the lizard man’s out-of-the-blue debut album, Recess. It’s nowhere near as pointlessly noisy as his EPs, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites and Bangarang, but it is similarly as trashy.

That said, Skrillex has always been a producer who knows exactly what he is doing. The dubstep phenomenon didn’t create itself after all, and in actuality, Skrillex (a.k.a. Sonny Moore) didn’t either — it was a genre that originated in the UK in about 1998, when electronic artists started to experiment with ‘wobbling’ bass lines and drops. It has typically been associated with much darker, melancholic electronic music such as the soothing ghostliness of Mercury Prize-winning James Blake, but it has also been recognised for its underground dance floor prominence, with artists such as the African mask-wearing SBTRKT.

With such an enormous chasm separating these artists’ sounds, Skrillex’s association with the dubstep scene is partially incorrect. He is only responsible for taking elements of the genre, and developing what has come to be known as ‘bro-step’ — a musical term with no real significance, other than that it represents the heavy metal-like electro/dubstep style that rose our greasy friend to fame. It’s a signature sound that is only now (after about four years) beginning to experience a decline in interest (in favour of emerging genres like ‘trap’). In that light, Recess could not be any later to the party.

Granted, Skrillex attempts to keep things fresh by regularly combining his aggressive style with trap and club-inspired electro-house. Some of these tracks are well-produced, such as the trap-inspired ‘Doompy Poomp’, and ‘F*** That’, which infuses elements of grime to create something that is sinister, but also reasonably modest for a Skrillex song.

But the majority of Recess’ tracks only make me wish Skrillex had stuck with the style that made him popular, as repulsive as it inherently is. Songs like ‘Coast Is Clear’ and ‘Dirty Vibe’ are strong enough to experience some popularity amongst DJs and radio hosts for a short time, but with the landscape of electronic dance music changing rapidly with every passing year, it’s unlikely that these songs will possess enough drive to stick around like a Daft Punk or Deadmau5 track does. It’s a shame that the few tracks that adhere to Skrillex’s old style simply do not pack the same punch as the hits that built his foundation, like ‘Bangarang’. Skrillex may have been somewhat better off playing to his strengths, rather than trying his hand at more experimentation.

It will be interesting to see whether Skrillex continues to carry his signature sound beyond the point where it will no longer be relevant, or if he will eventually fade into obscurity.

Andrew Nardi

Check out Recess’ opening song, ‘All Is Fair In Love And Brostep (featuring Ragga Twins)’