Does anyone else like Skrillex?

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Usually for me, a Skrillex song is hit and miss. I love the massive growling sounds and bass drops rather than some of the wub action as Reptile and Bang-a-rang are favorites of mine.

For me, I find Skrillex is much more hard electro-house sounding which makes me wonder why the hell everyone is saying he's a dubstep producer. It's evidently clear that he sounds a lot like Justice (just listen to "Rivers of Nazereth"). Just because something goes wub wub doesn't mean it's dubstep. There are other genres that have played with rythmic LFO techniques in electronica even before dubstep came onto the scene. I find the half tempo grooves and breaks in tracks like Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites are what make things more dubstep rather than the glitching and bass "wow-ing." I usually listen to European dubstep because of the dark and half tempo grooves are harder and edgier.

It's all a bit meh.
I love electronic music, love drum and bass, dance, trance, rave and I quite like some dubstep but Skillrex just doesn't do anything for me.

In no way is he 'hardcore' and people like Fatboy Slim were openly mainstream but did it incredibly well.

Just sounds like a 16 year old with no talent doing a bit of 'me too' on his computer.

Skrillex is contributing to the death of music.

How so? Just curious.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtuKLGey39Y[/youtube]

wub wub wu- No.

I know it's typical of a metalhead to rip on rap music, but boy I prefer rap and even 80s country over most dubstep, let alone skrillex.

The sound, lack of instruments, lyrics and everything just don't work for me. I can't judge music too well because half the vocalists I listen to sound like dying gargoyles, so I guess it's irrelevant.

Yes! This is my favorite song of theirs.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJVmu6yttiw[/youtube]

I like skrillex, it helps me relax, and stim also. i go to sleep with earbuds on, helps me get out of this world into my own planet. feels like i am going home.

I'm a hardcore Dubstep fan, and even though Skrillex only produces Dubstep once in a blue moon, I can credit him for getting me interested.

Once I really got deep into Dubstep and other forms of EDM, Skrillex started seeming like an amateur. That is, until a few months ago, when I stumbled on my Scary Monsters & Nice Sprites EP, and popped it in my car for old times sake.

The damnedest thing happened, I actually enjoyed it. That EP is fun and incredibly catchy. I don't consider him to be a musical genius, but I've learned to enjoy it for what it is. Scary Monsters even satisfies my inner snob by including a remix by Noisia that's freaking brutal.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlEx3QgQcrE[/youtube]

I was a fan of him a few years ago, and I even went and bought a physical copy of the "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" EP, though nowadays I wouldn't really say I'm much of a fan. He's done a few good songs, but he's also partially responsible for sparking one of the most obnoxious, overdone trends in popular music, that trend being "brostep" and frankly, I am just sick of it.

If it had just stopped at Skrillex making a few EPs, it would have been awesome, but instead every amateur producer with a pirated copy of FL Studio heard his stuff and thought "hey! I can be the next Skrillex!", and as a result we got tons and tons of crappy, derivative brostep tracks, most of which are just lame remixes of other popular songs.

Notice how I referred to it as "brostep" and not "dubstep"? That's because dubstep is actually a relatively obscure genre that originated among British DJs in the late 90s. What we call "dubstep" nowadays is really "brostep", a subgenre that eschews the sub-bass frequencies in favor of aggressive midrange frequencies, that occupy a similar register to what an electric guitar would use in heavy metal. Now, brostep was invented as a derisive term, but here I'm mainly using it to differentiate it from the original form of "dubstep". I haven't heard much "dubstep", but I have heard a good amount of "brostep", and I do actually enjoy some of it, like I mentioned above. Doesn't mean that I'm not sick of it as a trend though.

Thinking about it now, a better term for "brostep", borrowing from heavy metal genre classifications, would be "NWOD" or "New Wave of Dubstep", or more specifically, "NWOAD", "New Wave of American Dubstep". This would help differentiate this subgenre from dubstep's original, British form.


Geez, I really went on a tangent there. Ironically, I'm listening to EDM at the moment, but not dubstep or brostep.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-IPG-XnaU&feature=kp[/youtube]

This song, actually the whole album it came from, is awesome. It's industrial/trance/EBM, with *gasp!* actual lyrics, and all done on only three keyboards (two samplers and a synth). Personally, I like this better than 99% of the dubstep/brostep out there.

I do not like dubstep, I find the bass drops to be irritating (heavy metal riffing is a much better execution of aggressive music than wubs), and however the execute the vocals usually tends to be rather annoying as well. That being said, I have to say Skrillex is much better than most dubstep.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying. While I wouldn't say I'm a fan of brostep, I do admit that I like some of it. Like I mentioned earlier on, the main problem with the brostep scene is that 99% of the content out there is done by amateur basement producers who have no idea what they're doing. Skrillex at least has some talent, and as such he's one of the few brostep producers I'll listen to, along with Noisia.

But anyway, most so-called "bass-drops" in brostep lack bass and are just poor attempts at making "aggressive" electronic sounds, and the reason why the vocals usually suck is because 99% of brostep tracks are remixes of pop songs, and I tend to hate pop vocals with a passion.

Uprising, awesome post, was fun watching those. Here's a guy I've been getting into a lot lately, not d/s but its pretty cool
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H28YlOrnTaA[/youtube]

It's not just the fact they are pop vocals, while similar effects are used in modern pop and I despise the vocals in most modern pop, at heart vocals are used in pop in a completely different way, and the general execution of pop vocals throughout all time I'm cool with. Like in general rock just uses a more emotional and aggressive variation of pop vocals, it's the same song structures and everything. In a way EDM vocals like those in dubstep are sort of the opposite of pop vocals (though rapping is also very unpoppy at core, but has been well adopted into modern pop). It's the way they are manipulated to lack any melodic or lyrics sensibility and just be repeated annoyingly. Like I really hate the vocals in "My Name is Skrillex", and while I like spliced vocals in the intro to "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites", I hate the screaming of "Oh my God". Completely agree with your assessment of bass drops, the amateurs just try to create as abrasive of a sound as possible and forget that it's actually supposed to be listenable. Of course it's all subjective, but I've found the bass drop in "My Name is Skrillex" actually has some musical sensibility to it. I like metal because it's intense, not because I'm trying to inflict pain on myself.

Oh, and on a side note, I'm fine with traditional dubstep like Skream, though I don't find it particularly interesting.