He’s a festival-circuit megastar who’s already put an indelible sonic imprint on the early stretch of this decade, but it still feels like Sonny Moore got a raw deal. Sure, the fact Skrillex became the face of dubstep did plenty to rile the “purists,” but the Tempa–12“-hoarder set wasn’t responsible for reducing an unsubtle but genuinely adventurous and accessibly weird artist to a living meme. Outlets that eyerolled at first-wave dubstep as too niche belatedly rushed to hail Skrillex as the person who could—hallelujah!—finally make electronic music that you could mosh to and glibly compare to punk-fuckin’-rawk. By the beginning of this year, it was starting to feel like the reduction of his music’s endorphin-explosion dynamics to a ”wait for the drop" punchline would drain all the giddiness out of Skrillex’s catalogue before he even got around to a full-length debut.
But at the end of the day, all the thinkpieces about corporate rave and pop crossover and subgenre snobbery weren’t enough to obscure just how open Skrillex has been to switching his game up. You could call it from the word go: 2010’s My Name Is Skrillex delivered sugar-high jolts of French Touch that integrated Todd Edwards-style chopped-vocal fusillades into Justice-style snarl-house. And while the trademark mechano-industrial shivers and alarms in his subsequent work sound like chaotic ADD noise on the surface, it’s also frenetically unpredictable and musically fun in a way not commonly heard since the crab-scratch heyday of super-advanced turntablism. (Listen to Mix Master Mike’s Napalm Rockets—released a few months before My Name Is Skrillex—for a great if probably unexpected precedent.) No matter that he learned about IDM when Korn gave Aphex Twin props on TRL; the point is that Skrillex decided he wouldn’t stop learning. And yet that’s why Recess is confounding: it hints at places Skrillex could take his sound, but doesn’t feel ready to commit to any of them.
What expectation-meeting wub-wub stuff there is on this album is diverting and enjoyable, even if it feels obligatory in the context of this album's attempt at breadth. I mean, the leadoff cut is called “All Is Fair in Love and Brostep”—the man clearly knows the joke and is savvy enough to turn it into a “yes, and” improv sketch. That he gives the opening-track spotlight to a guest spot by the Ragga Twins—the MCs whose early 1990s singles made them connoisseur go-tos and pivotal figures in the early UK rave and jungle scene—points to a lineage that his detractors rarely gave him credit for. And the track is fittingly rugged—nothing that’ll have dubstep aficionados forgetting the Bug anytime soon, but it’s easy to hear the fundamental strength of his basslines and the nuanced timing of percussion. Between “All Is Fair”, the more explicitly dancehall-informed Ragga Twins teamup “Ragga Bomb”, and the crowdpleasing “Try It Out” (built alongside Owsla signee Alvin Risk), Skrillex proves adept at going beyond the build-drop-build-drop Pavlov response to something a bit more dynamic and playful.
But the broader sound is also pretty familiar at this point, an issue that he’s aimed to confront with the album’s forays into whatever-works eclecticism. Sometimes the results are at least fascinatingly off-kilter. “Doompy Poomp” is the biggest wait-what? moment on the album, a galumphing kind of schaffel/wonky/IDM hydra that’s all candy-colored grotesque. “Fuck That” dials back the bass a bit to something more in line with the distant swells of circa-02 Horsepower Productions sides, wraps his sensibilities around a beat more befitting of contemporary bass music, and builds the big ramp-up moment towards a switched-up version of the rhythm that bristles with negative space. And “Fire Away” returns to the shallow-Burial shot at spacious UK garage that he tried out on "Leaving", a tolerable effort that’s upended by jarringly twee melodic accents and the grating wail of singer Kid Harpoon.
What’s worrying is the stuff that seems to sidestep his oddball ADD energy completely. Even if brostep is pop these days, it’s at least pop in a polarizingly abrasive sense; his maneuvers towards other more accessible sounds not only sound less bracing but feel pulled out of his hands. Teaming up with Diplo and getting K-pop superstars G-Dragon (Big Bang) and CL (2NE1) is an inspired move in theory, but “Dirty Vibe” sounds so dominated by familiar Southern bounce and trap tropes that it feels like Skrillex is taking a smoke break and letting Mad Decent take over for a bit. The title track is even more confused—Fatman Scoop and Passion Pit’s Michael Angelakos together at… last?—with pseudo-Sleigh Bells pep rally bluster and bang-on-a-PVC-pipe moombahton that plays like decline-era big beat. And “Coast Is Clear” is jazzed-up d’n’b that keeps tripping over its own snares, with Chance the Rapper’s voice the closest there is to an element of wavering chaos; shame his appearance is little more than a repeated if extended hook. (At least the machine-gun “doyouwannafuck, doyouwannafuck, doyouwannafuck” refrain has staying power.)
The progression from early singles to first album isn’t nearly the same arc as it was just 10 years ago, but it’s still weird that the first full-length showcase for Skrillex as self-contained album artist feels more like a transitional record than a debut that plays to his strengths. It’s tempting to suggest he’s ahead of the curve when it comes to the eventuality of the sound he popularized getting stale, but he probably has his own reasons for tweaking, sanding down, subduing, or otherwise retooling the parameters for what could be considered his signature aesthetic. If it points his fanbase towards another set of sounds to appreciate, it could be at least somewhat worth it. But more of these half measures, and they might just wind up deciding to listening to someone else entirely.
