Skrillex Isn’t Surprised By Dubstep Takeoff
Don’t believe the hype: Skrillex didn’t set out to wrestle dubstep from its brainy dub-reggae roots and warp it into an aggro dance-metal hybrid that online haters call “brostep.” “I thought I’d play the Echo in L.A. once a month for 150 people,” says Sonny Moore, 23, who quit fronting screamo band From First to Last to focus on beatmaking. Instead, Moore has played to thousands almost daily since dropping his first LP, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, last year on Big Beat and his buddy Deadmau5’s label.
But he’s not surprised by the rapid ascent of dubstep in the United States. “It’s so fun,” he says. “It just lets so many people in and there’s nothing about it that seems shoved down anybody’s throats. You can connect with it culturally because it brings so many different types of people together, from ravers to hip-hop people to whatever people like to dance.” He’s bracing himself for what will happen when the music fully crosses over in the mainstream, though. “There will come a time when it will be watered down and sensationalized like everything else. That’s not a bad thing, every type of music goes through that. But right now, for how big it is, if you turn on Kiss FM, there’s no real dustup on the radio right now.”
In addition to new collaborations with Korn (“It’s really tasteful”) and the Doors, Skrillex is planning to release a crop of brand new tracks. “I have like 30 songs done,” he says. “I couldn’t put together an album with what I have, because it’s not cohesive as an album. So I’ll probably end up just releasing some EPs of maybe like six songs each. I don’t want to just put 12 songs together and call it an album because it doesn’t feel like it flows.”
As Skrillex faces the future, he’s learning to tune out the critics. “A few hundred people might be bitching on a message board, but you can go to a festival and find 100,000 people dancing to my music,” says Skrillex. “No one gives a fuck.”
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This is from the November 10, 2001 issue of Rolling Stone.