After a long dormancy in 2012 and most of 2013, Skrillex has finally begun to release the bulk of his new material. Starting with his “Try It Out EP” and International remix in October, his new songs show an interesting maturity in his sounds after experimenting with several genres such as house, trap, dubstep, moombahton and techno. The new album “Recess,” is far more diverse, and features more artists than any of his other albums from the past. It’s time to say goodbye to his era of monster growls and such.
Skrillex (Sonny Moore) is famous for not telling the full truth about his release dates. In January 2013, the artist claimed that his new, full length solo album would be ready for release by the summer. Later in the spring of that year, he announced in an interview that “more music [was] coming, and lot of it [was coming] at once.” When summer finally arrived, no works were released under the name “Skrillex.” Instead, Sonny collaborated with Alexander Ridha and MISHKA that summer, releasing only four new songs, three under the name “Dog Blood”, and one under the name “Skrocle.” Throughout the rest of 2013, it was announced that Sonny was collaborating with a large number of people, including but not limited to the Ragga Twins, Diplo, G-Dragon, CL, Kill the Noise, and Fatman Scoop. When a fan asked the Ragga Twins about the release date of their collaborations, Ragga Twins responded, saying they would be released on New Year’s Day (2014). Personal accounts of people who met Skrillex and the Ragga Twins in person also claimed that the Ragga Twins announced the release date to be the first day of 2014, right in front of Skrillex. On New Year’s Day, however, nothing happened.
The train of hype had died down until March 8th, when Skrillex changed his website to feature a small alien that would play samples of his new songs when clicked on. All of these songs had been played live several times before this, filling the web with heavily distorted, barely audible recordings of the new album tracks. The site also advertised Sonny’s app, titled “Alien Ride,” which was a game that featured several countdown timers. All timers were set to end in 30 minute intervals of each other. On the evening of March 10, the app allowed users to stream one song after another with the 30 minute intervals between each track. Finally, all 11 tracks of his forthcoming debut album, “Recess.” had been unleashed onto the internet.
Although the album contains most of his new works, several VIP’s (variations in production) of old songs were debuted live, but were not featured in it. These tracks include Kyoto VIP, First of the Year VIP, Bangarang VIP, Breakn’ a Sweat VIP, and Levels VIP vs. Cinema (Long Intro), all of which except First of the Year VIP are better than the original tracks (in my opinion. tbh the original was pretty bad but the VIP is even worse). Many fans were also disappointed to find that older unreleased songs were not on the album. (e.g. Voltage, Voltage (ft. Nero ver.), Voltage VIP, Bug Hunt, etc.)
The track on the album most worth mentioning is a song entitled “Stranger ft. KillaGraham from Milo and Otis and Sam Dew,” as it will be used in the soundtrack for the upcoming movie, Divergent. “All Is Fair In Love and Brostep” is also worth some discussion. After Zomboy released his Reanimated EP, several fans and critics pointed out that one track, “Terror Squad” closely resembled a new song that Skrillex had earlier streamed on BBC radio labeled as “Untitled DJ Tool.” Although Terror Squad only has a few things in common with Skrillex’s “Untitled DJ Tool,” a section of “All Is Fair In Love and Brostep” is almost identical to Zomboy’s Terror Squad. Several fans believed that this was an act of revenge against Zomboy, but tweets from both artists reveal that Skrillex’s copycat song was nothing more than a joke. The title of the song also suggests that “all is fine” between the two artists.
