Skrillex is at the point in his career that when he talks, we listen.
The tastemaker and talented producer/DJ has created an empire of sounds and artists, at his beck and call, an army of sound warriors that have only one goal in mind: total domination. And according to Skrillex, if that isn’t in EDM, then that’s okay.
“I totally see that sort of scene declining, because it’s in a bubble….as far as EDM goes—I’m talking about DJs—there’s been a wave right now and you can ride on it. But a platform is really arbitrary when it comes to an artist. An artist creates songs and timeless moments that are reflections that impact culture, and you can do that in any way—with guitars, ukelele, a computer. So, that will never die. It’s always the artist behind the computer, not the computer. You just told me yourself you can tell it’s a Skrillex remix, but there is a lot of music out there that you can play side by side and you can’t hear the personality—that has a timeline on it, for sure.” 
Skrillex recently engaged in two interviews, with Pitchfork and Zane Lowe on Apple Music. The focus of the interviews was his “Red Lips” remix and video, and how it has been so sought after for the year, and how even after having it ripped multiple times since March, it still created so much buzz when it came out yesterday.
Skrillex notes how the video took six months to create, citing a lack of deadline and complete creative freedom. At least from GTA’s perspective, when Skrillex remixes one of your tracks, turns it into one of the biggest hits of the year, and wants to create a complete audio/visual experience to go along with it, you tend to give the man carte blanche.
Along a similar thread, his fans are much more constricting. Reacting to fan backlash after Justin Bieber’s album Purpose dropped, Skrillex says, “I got a lot of backlash from some of my fans because they think like, this is a money thing… I make more money DJing, if you want to talk about it. It’s not about money. It’s a lot of work doing records. You’re taking the backseat for someone else. It’s the same reason why I like to do movie scoring… you don’t make any money doing that. It’s a passion thing.”
Skrillex started out in the post-hardcore (I actually had to look that up to make sure I got it right) band From First To Last, so you could say that he has some humble beginnings. Besides gaining some recognition and success from his emo days, it’s been nothing compared to the success he’s seen from his Skrillex and Jack Ü projects.
But it’s never been about the fame and money. It all comes back to the music.
“That’s the hardest, ballsiest thing to do as an artist is to commit to something new and create a consistent idea and story… especially as a computer producer, you literally can make any type of music, and that’s the hardest part – that’s what makes the artist, is the choice.”
Listen to the full Zane Lowe interview below, and read the Pitchfork interview here.
via EDM.com
