Features
SKRILLEX: THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE
- Words
- Features
Sonny Moore is the 23-year-old US dubstep phenomenon who’s come from an emo background to become the biggest noise in the game. It’s been a very, very good year for Skrillex.
Words: Sean Griffiths
Photos: Zach Cordner, Charlie Raven, Regal D, Tom Horton
Published in Mixmag December 2011
When Mixmag first claps eyes on Skrillex he’s looking every inch the rock star. Maybe it’s the bodyguards. Backstage at Global Gathering 2011, the king of US dubstep, his thick NHS specs, head-to-toe black clothes and severely undercut long hair (a look by now on its way to becoming as distinctive as any Mau5head) is making his way from the artist area to the stage sandwiched between two huge members of his road crew. The two giants, both six-and-a-half feet tall with beards that even Brian Blessed would envy, somehow make the diminutive DJ stand out even more. Progress is leisurely as cigarettes are chain-smoked, pictures are taken with gushing fans and high-fives are exchanged with the bass music glitterati.
The man in question is Sonny Moore, aka Skrillex, and his entourage has just landed with a bang. While he may be small in stature at around 5’4”, and thin as a rake, the reaction and adulation he receives is colossal. A tent filled to the brim with girls decked out in neon paint and bare chested, muscle-bound boys erupts into a sweaty mass of moshing and slam dancing. The overspill is hundreds deep. DJs and fans who’ve managed to blag backstage clamber to the side of the stage, only to be rounded up by security guards not used to such an onslaught of fan devotion at a dance music festival. It was the same frenzy at Rockness, LED and Parklife in Manchester, and one we’ll see again at Creamfields and at Bestival, as Skrillex blitzes his way across the UK all summer like a one-man whirlwind.
This kind of reaction is nothing new for the 23-year-old. The LA native has done more than anyone to take dubstep, a genre first founded in the sweaty backrooms of UK clubs, to an almost hysterically receptive red state America, along the way becoming one of the biggest draws on the international dance music circuit. It kicked off in April, when he played a mid-afternoon set at Coachella that climaxed in full-on stage-diving chaos. Since then his EP, ‘Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites’, has sat at the top of the iTunes dance music chart for over four months, ‘Skrillex’ has become the most searched for term on Soundcloud (‘dubstep’ being the second), he has a modest million-plus friends on Facebook and his single ‘Ruffneck (Full Flex)’ has been on constant Radio 1 rotation for months. His 51 videos on YouTube have over 100 million views.
Exiting the stage after his rapturously received set he steps back into fan frenzy as people clamber for pictures and other big names like High Contrast and Nero go by barely noticed.
Although undoubtedly the centre of attention, Skrillex has the demeanour of someone yet to completely prove himself. As Mixmag prises him away from the gaggle of fans for a photo-shoot he berates himself for a mistake made during the set. “I fucked up, man. I opened up the wrong project file and didn’t know where loads of tracks were,” he says, with a shake of the head. “The crowd were fucking great, though!” he adds. His voice is surprisingly low and gravelly.
Heading back to the press tent to conduct the interview, the hubbub around him continues and his manager advises us to keep a close eye on him: “he’s going to keep bumping into friends,” we’re told. Plans are made to party with Chase & Status later in the night, and hugs are exchanged with a gaggle of girls who tower above him, before we finally make it back to the press tent where a crowd of onlookers gathers.
While 2011 may be the year that Skrillex’s star truly ascended, his musical journey began well before his teens. The product of an adopted background and a childhood that saw him zig-zag between LA and San Francisco, Skrillex had his first bite of the musical apple on the LA punk scene.
“I moved back to LA when I was twelve and didn’t have any friends. I started going on chat rooms to meet people and going to punk shows with them,” he says, reaching for one of several cigarettes he’ll smoke during the course of our interview.
His musical baptism in the LA punk scene led to days skipping school and the formation of From First To Last, a band characterised more by emo balladeering and shredding riffs than the sub-bass, sped-up vocals and infectious tremelo synth lines that characterise the Skrillex sound.
When a deal with Capitol Records fell through, leaving the band unable to record, Sonny left to concentrate on producing, firstly putting out what he calls “a poppy electro thing” under his own name. But it wasn’t until he took on his current moniker that he really began to get noticed. Dave Rene of Interscope picked up on him through Soundcloud and a slew of high-profile remixes for the likes of Lady Gaga soon followed.
While in conversation he shies away from the term ‘dubstep’, preferring to refer to his output as either “electronic” or “bass music”, but it’s certainly his main calling card when it comes to producing. His first exposure to the genre came in 2007, when DJ and producer Twelfth Planet came back from Europe armed with a suitcase full of dubplates and started seminal LA night Smog. Remembering the atmosphere as “Dark and moody, with a lot of hoods up”, the night led to an explosion of interest in the genre in the city.
“Remember when Rusko played?” he says, looking over at one of his two bearded managers who are returning from the artist area barbecue. “That was crazy. Smog was big, but Rusko came over and sold out The Avalon, a two thousand capacity venue, all by himself [in 2009].” He grabs a bulging hamburger from his tour manager’s hands.
While in the UK, dubstep has evolved from laid back and brooding roots into a bolshie, thundering beast, the US has gone straight for the gnarly, mid-level, bleep-heavy strand made popular by the likes of Rusko. But while much is made of Skrillex’s bass-heavy, moshpit-ready breakdowns, it’s the irresistibly sugary hooks that set him apart from his contemporaries.
“When you take away the monsters that’s what’s always going to be underneath,” he says. It’s this blend of infectious melodies and intense
bass levels that has driven tens of thousands of people to his shows across the States.
“We can sell out gigs in the Bible Belt and it’s like a Metallica show! Girls taking their clothes off, moshpits, stage diving. Shit gets crazy out there,” he says, impatient now to escape and party with his friends.
But what does he have to say to the internet naysayers and music forum dwellers who see his music as the soundtrack to a million college frat parties, or dubstep for the nu-metal generation?
Putting down his hamburger in a manner that suggests he’s got something to get off his chest, he spits: “It’s a fucking fable! An imaginary war!”
Referring to the recent appearance of an ‘I Hate Skrillex’ group on Facebook, he says, through a widening grin, “I always say they’re like crickets, these people, because you can hear them – but when you walk by they shut the fuck up! No-one in the scene has a problem with me. I come to London and hang out with guys like Skream and Benga. It’s just bullshit.” Friendly, cheerful and overflowing with nervous, frantic energy, with darting eyes and a frequent wide grin, it’s no wonder that he’s popular with his longer-established peers – even if some of their fans don’t share the enthusiasm.
But there are plenty of people who do. Two months later and Mixmag catches up with Skrillex again at Bestival, where he’s playing in an identikit gigantic festival tent. By now ‘Ruffneck (Full Flex)’ has become the undoubted anthem of festival season, and steam, and a cacophony of voices, rise from the rammed tent as he takes to the stage. In between his own tracks he plays snippets of Damien Marley’s ‘Welcome To Jamrock’ and stretches out Skream’s ‘In For The Kill’ remix to even greater levels of intensity. As he drops single ‘Rock N Roll (Will Take You to the Mountain)’ with its refrain of, “Hello again to all my friends, together we can make some rock ’n’ roll,” what once seemed like a sly quip at the doubters now looks like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And it’s clear that Skrillex’s ambition extends beyond being the poster boy of American dubstep. Talk turns to possible film soundtracks and a move into orchestration; but before that there’s his new record label OWSLA, the name taken from the book Watership Down. And, of course, there’s the mammoth US/Europe ‘Mothership’ tour, which kicks off this month, and will blaze a trail through 57 dates and a selection of venues and cities, from the State Theatre in Portland, Maine, the Jackie Gleason Theatre in Miami and The Moon in Talahasse Florida to Paradiso in Amsterdam, Fabric and Koko in London and the Warehouse Project in Manchester. And finally there’s his long-awaited debut album ‘Voltage’, out next year on Asylum in the UK for which he tells us he’s ‘got 20 songs he needs to narrow down’.
“With success I take it one day at a time, but in terms of making music I’m thinking twenty years ahead all the time,” he says, mustering a degree of complete seriousness for the first time in the whole interview.
And with a tap on the shoulder from his tour manager and the arrival of an ice bucket full of beers, the interview is brought to an inevitable full stop. Bottles are popped and celebratory cheers are had. The party looks like going on for a long time.
