Dance singles are usually made for DJs to mix into and out of, and tend to array their effects over long running times, the better to guide a room full of dancers to collective peaks. But when Skrillex arrived in 2010, he was having none of that. With him, you got everything, everywhere, all at once, the bass tones turned to taffy, the spoken sound bites knowingly and proudly cheesy. Skrillex’s brand of what critic Simon Reynolds dubbed “digital maximalism” has always had an intensely playful edge — he strapped the listener into a top-line VR helmet, designed the backgrounds to constantly shift shape, and then let fly. It was less studied surrealism than a black-lit funhouse-mirror image of dance music’s sonic possibilities. Psychedelic dance music comes in all types.
Skrillex also made a smooth transition into the wider world of pop music, winning a slew of Grammys and collaborating on hit records with the likes of Diplo and Justin Bieber (“Where Are Ü Now,” by Jack Ü). He’s also been busy on his own, issuing two albums back-to-back only two years ago — Quest for Fire and, 24 hours later, Don’t Get Too Close. Even so, there’s something refreshed and charged about Fuck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol But Ur Not!! (or FUS). It’s antic, but that’s not all it is. The music follows itself along, one tune blending cleanly or mischievously into the next, a beginning-to-end journey in sound that unveils new details over many plays. The pauses in the onslaught count as much as the sheer array of sound bites cutting through the production.
Skrillex’s sound remains sharply textured — there’s space in the mix even when he’s stacking bass tones, bent to hell and all playing the same silly pattern. His low end still gleefully warps and woofs in almost comically outsized patterns. It’s his cultivated style, a sonic trademark, an aural Skrillex logo. It’s also the answer to one of the first things we hear: “Skrillex is dead,” as announced by a disdainful woman and a Hollywood voiceover man played by DJ Smokey. That cinematic touch isn’t incidental: FUS is clearly aiming at an sonic version of an IMAX blockbuster. Imagine Flow as a 3D film done with CGI, rather than drawn and animated.
Except, of course, you’d have to replace the animals with cyborgs. Skrillex has never restricted his distension of sonic materials to merely supersizing his bass lines, and among other things, the voices on this album are routinely phased and retuned and cut up. The landscape seldom stays the same, even when sections recur. Though there are many well-placed moments of rest, FUS never pauses — even when the voiceover man announces that the music “has been replaced by silence,” we still hear crickets in the mix. Then the crickets become a new rhythmic feint, arranged for trap rhythm, and then another bass line blows up the landscape. The bass line is aboard both to guide the listener (“Reject society! Return to nature!” he informs us as a breathy girl-group roundelay over rising and bubbling analog synths enter the picture), and also to mock the idea of a coherent narrative. As ever, sensation is the point — especially when it’s done with this much attention to detail.
