I love Skrillex.
Well, that’s not entirely true, I suppose. I actually think Skrillex is miserable.
But I love the idea of Skrillex.
Whether he intended to or not, ex-From First to Last front man Sonny Moore is doing something remarkable for music, something deeply counterintuitive to his decidedly elitist hardcore roots: He’s uniting the scenes. I don’t mean that as literally as I wish I did—indie kids still hate on everything mainstream, hip-hop junkies still loath posers, and the punk scene, well, they’re still self-righteous. But Skrillex’s music is providing a sort of stopgap between the mundane and the, dare I say it? transmundane. From day one it always struck me as bizarre how welcoming the public was to Moore’s music. After all, he’s not making booty-club bangers or whatever; he’s making safe, easily digestible and entirely harmless noise music for the masses.
And that’s my point—Skrillex has brought the weirdest side of pop, the most abrasive and distasteful of its regiments into the spotlight. He’s not doing any Merzbow or Whitehouse stuff (and frankly, I can’t wait till he does), but he’s definitely testing the limits of the mainstream’s sensibilities. All a drop is (for him, at least), is belted distortion, pushing how far a hook can go before it’s no longer a hook. It’s weird. People don’t seem to realize it, but it’s very, very weird. And it’s likely only to get weirder—the mainstream’s on the cusp of finally buying into extremist, music-nerd bull.
I don’t really want to talk about Skrillex though—that was just a segue that turned into a poorly half-article rant. No, what I want to talk about is the black sheep of music, the Dr. Wilbur Swain of the community, the much derided and infrequently adored avant-garde.
Liars’ Drum’s Not Dead was the first so-called ‘experimental’ album I ever purchased. In reflection, it’s nowhere near as strange as I thought it was when I first bought it (from Borders, no less), but a lot of the more bizarre tracks still demonstrate what I’ve come to appreciate in terms of weirder music. Droning guitars, electronic impositions, vocals as atmosphere and garbled, cerebral lyrics, all exciting as individual components that could be selected, mixed at whim, to make a new and strange combination.
The more extreme the artist the less the odds they reach prominence. But a few acts have really shone through the cracks for various reasons. Yellow Swans, harsh-noise enthusiasts, received much attention for their final and most accessible record, the cheekily titled Going Places. Likewise, musical vandal (quite literally) The Caretaker (formerl V/Vm) recently exploded (quite figuratively) with his 2011 album An Empty Bliss Beyond This World. On it, James Kirby mixes old ballroom- dance tracks and distorts and damages them until they sound, above all, absolutely haunting. Prolific drone duo Natural Snow Buildings release tapes every year, sometimes multiple times per year, each one more monolithic than the last. Their opus, Daughter of Darkness, is a six-hour collection of 16 gigantic songs, a good number of which are well over 20 minutes long.
It’s beautiful stuff, but it’s not for everyone.
Scott Walker, ’60s baroque-superhero-turned-nightmare-sound-magician, recently released a video for a track off his new album, the unnervingly titled “Epizootics!” off the even more unnervingly titled Bish Bosch (see: “The Garden of Earthly Delights”). The song is hideous, a lurching mass of throbbing drums, harsh guitar tremors, hand claps and rotten brass bellows, all coated with Scott’s trademarked diseased baritone. “Their putrid panels dropping, erasing their white hues/ like a face being eaten by a jungle,” he croons, his voice alien, detached. Scott was a highly regarded ’60s popsmith, well regarded in his time as a master of popular music—it was only after an 11-year hiatus in the mid ’80s that he returned with Tilt, a strange and vaporous album, often gentle and sometimes monstrous but always eerie. He dropped The Drift 11 years later.
It was everything that made Tilt scary cranked up to a 10. At an unnerving peak, Scott stalls the song for a few moments, and then suddenly, over a massive crash of sound, a donkey starts braying loudly. It’s a unique experience.
So I know that’s a long way to go from Skrillex. I don’t expect much. I’d be happy if people who listen to Skrillex even got into Aphex Twin. It’s a big thing to ask. But I like to think that the seed is planted, and it won’t be long until the frenzied-frat masses are clamoring for Glenn Branca to play the Union (well, you get the point).
