DJ Snake is a young French DJ and producer best known for his endless sugar high of a song “Turn Down for What,” and, up until now, his big moments have felt worth the tooth rot. Other big time producers from, Afrojack to Zedd, make mostly humorless music. Their drops and major keys work for clubs of course, with huge dynamic shifts that play to the pit of your stomach the same way a roller coaster does. The genius of them is they also work for partying on a smaller scale, like for at-home pregaming. EDM’s lack of subtlety isn’t a fault—it’s the entire point. For the genre, you can often replace questions of “good” and bad” with “useful” or “useless.” EDM is a tool as much as it is a type of music. DJ Snake has taken EDM’s inherent grandeur and played around in its sandbox. “Turn Down for What,” especially, turned the dial past eleven. Its over the top aggression is written into its rhythms. The song has Lil Jon barking at you. It’s ludicrous, and excellently so. After billions of of plays, it’s still not old, as it well overshoots its modest ambitions. In other words, at his best, DJ Snake under-promises and over-delivers.
Unfortunately, we don’t get much of DJ Snake at his best on Encore. Clearly DJ Snake has the ability to make some serious earworms: “Sahara,” with Skrillex, adds an element of surprise, in the form of tablas and chanting. It’s got a predictable buildup and inevitable drop, before some very “Turn Down” esque synth jabs take over. It’s dumb fun. “Ocho Cinco,” the album’s most successfully ridiculous track, mostly eschews vocals (like “Sahara”) and utilizes what basically sounds like a nail gun for most of its drums. It sounds appropriate for driving your car into a wall. Same with “Propaganda,” which follows a similar formula of exuberant pummelling.
But instead of just riding out that vim and vigor, he looks to make a real album, more songs with choruses and verses. Why? There’s a fish with a bicycle comparison to be made here. The album is simply not the format for DJ Snake. The conventional song barely is. He makes tracks. Instead of being, at least, a collection of great, standalone singles, the album is riddled with ill-advised rap songs and bad ballads. At best, “Let Me Love You,” the collaboration with Justin Bieber (who knows his way around silly EDM beats) is forgettable. Jeremih, on “The Half” sounds half awake on the beat’s video game bloops. Closer “Here Comes the Night” with Mr. Hudson is actually pretty good in that slick Ryan-Gosling-movie-credits way. But how a clunker like “Future Pt 2” with limp vocals from Bipolar Sunshine ended up next to these songs is anyone’s guess. Can no one working on these records tell how bad they are?
Ultimately, the question that remains with Encore is really just: Why does this exist? The party tracks on here are exceptional at doing what they do. The guy can make a banger. Surely those songs would have the life they deserve on computer screens and in subwoofers however they’re released. The “Turn Down for What” video has half a billion YouTube views! It’s digestible. In what way does an uneven album help DJ Snake or his fans? Is his ambition to be a producer and songwriter? It probably shouldn’t be. No one needs these wet noodle ballads. They’re inoffensive, sure, but they’re completely unnecessary. Not sure what made him turn down.
