Skrillex Book Club: Volume 1 - My Name Is Skrillex (2010)

[hprara]

Image by bepmp3

Hello and welcome to the first instalment in what me and a few pals are dubbing the "Skrillex Book Club".
We're taking a listening journey through the discography of the great Sonny Moore and sharing some of our thoughts along the way.

Our first listen is the aptly titled...

My Name Is Skrillex (2010)



For simplicity's sake, this is the beginning. The start of the Skrillex name as we would come to know it.
(I'll ignore the OG Myspace era/Gost tracks for the time being but we'll get to them.

This wasn't my first introduction to Skrillex or even to the growing popularity of dub/brostep at the time, but some tracks off here were definitely in heavy rotation on my childhood iPod Touch. Specifically the title track and "Fucking Die 2 (€€ Cooper Mix)". I've seen a lot of people brush the latter off in favour of "Fucking Die 1" but I always rocked way harder with the sequel. Absolute banger. It was allegedly inspired by Huoratron's "$$ Troopers" (even down to the title it seems), and you can definitely hear it - especially in that little gabber/speedcore(?) breakdown bit. I love Skrillex' more electro/complextro oriented stuff from earlier in his career. Incredibly nostalgic for this sound as I'm sure many are.

It's kinda difficult for me to view this album outside of at least a partial nostalgic lens; and as much as I think we could all bare to focus maybe just a little less on nostalgia (yeah, yeah call me a hypocrite), I'll ramble a little for the sake of framing. The so-called "indie sleaze" revival in the past couple years or so has started to put back on display a lot of these electronic gems from various bygone online communities of the bloghaus days and while I don't think I'd directly lump this EP into that movement specifically, I'd relate them at least tangentially. I'll admit, I was not of an age where I was able to experience this movement to its fullest extent. But for as long as I've been on the internet, I've been a lurker. An explorer. A window shopper; grubby hands on the glass. I bring this up to say that (at least in my mind) this release fits into that era of budding creativity and exploration. An era of various firsts. You could start a music career with a laptop now. You didn't need a label to get heard, just enough patience to deal with late 2000s internet upload speeds.

All that said, this EP isn't perfect. Out of it's 6 tracks I'd say maybe 3 are like stellar. The rest, while still cool, are definitely a little underdeveloped imo. Good ideas but maybe not good enough to hold up over a full track's runtime. But I still love it. I'd still call it a foundational listen for myself.


Now it's your turn!
What are your thoughts on this EP? Do you love it/hate it? Have you even heard it? (if not, go listen, the image is a link to it's RYM page)
Speak your mind!

Closing props to gauze for the "book club" idea, and bep for thinking the same thing I was about turning it into something on the forums. Hope we can keep this a regular thing

[gauze_]

this is one of the only skrillex releases that i missed out on when i was younger. so im not tethered by nostalgia when i say that i just dont really feel this one? its not bad and i definitely enjoyed my experience with it but some of the ideas feel stretched thin with tracks like fucking die 2 feeling a little too long despite it being one of the more enjoyable tracks for me. its hard to put my finger on what i dislike about it other than it just feels off to me? some of the choices in composition just feel like they dont quite fit and feel out of place for whatever reason. with all of this being said i really really feel the need to state that i still LIKE this ep. i think its good. i talk a lot of shit but its out of a place of caring about what im listening to. this ep just doesnt quite do it for me specifically

favorite track: with you friends
least favorite: fucking die 1

[RAW_]

Like most people in the early 2010s, I was first introduced to Sonny Moore aka Skrillex through his 2011 EP Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites. It would actually be towards the mid-2010s until I actually checked out My Name Is Skrillex in full. This would have been around the time brostep as a movement was beginning to fade from the mainstream, so it was refreshing to hear this kind of sound from the man as someone who had yet to accept the fact that the genre was on its last legs. I had heard Weekends!!! as it was and still is the only song available on streaming services, and that track was obviously a banger, but I had finally decided to dive deep into Skrillex's YouTube page to listen to everything else. I thought the whole thing sounded excellent. A decade has past since then, and many of Skrillex's projects have since stayed in my rotation, My Name Is Skrillex included, though to a slightly lesser degree.

The title track still bangs after all this time. I remember first hearing it in some Gumball AMV. My favorite part of the song has to be the sample chops in the second half of the track with those strings. I think it provides a nice contrast to the louder first half. Weekends!!! also still holds up, possible being the best Sirah feature utilization in Skrillex's catalog. Fucking Die 1, however, is mediocre. It has the structure of a typical early brostep song, but it just doesn't really go all that hard. I'm not entirely sure why this doesn't work for me, maybe its because the drums are a little too quiet, but its probably just because Fucking Die 2 is a better song. It just works better as an Complextro song imo. Do Da Oliphant is a fine track, though its a little jarring to hear parts of With You Friends incorporated into the track. Speaking of With You Friends, the version on here is another fine track, though tbh I prefer the version thats on the Scary Monsters EP. I'll talk more about it when we get to that project.

Overall, relistening to this EP really made me miss the era of Skrillex. There are some duds, sure, but you can clearly tell these were all made by some MySpace kid fuckin around with a Mac, and thats really inspiring.

[hprara]

least favorite: fucking die 1

Fucking Die 1, however, is mediocre. It has the structure of a typical early brostep song, but it just doesn't really go all that hard. I'm not entirely sure why this doesn't work for me, maybe its because the drums are a little too quiet, but its probably just because Fucking Die 2 is a better song.

Yeah, this is kinda how I feel. It kinda just sounds like "baby's first brostep". It's a little bit nothing burger. Definitely agree about the drums. Like most of the drums on this EP are pretty simple when you pay attention to them but they hit nice and hard. The drums on Fucking Die 1 just don't punch like the others.

[bepmp3]

ok i expect myself write a lot on this, more prolly than the other entries i will write in the book club as this is my favorite skrillex release (tho F*CK U SKRILLEX is looking like it's climbing up there for me).

the title track (My Name is Skrillex) is still one of the insane things he has made to date, which is incredible considering it's his "introductory" track. my original exposure to this was from an old video by DubstepLyrics/DubstepReuploads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlyJuxjUm1c and it completely tore my mind open as a kid as i was only exposed to his slower tempo brostep stuff. how the fuck he did all of that in a mere 4 minutes and 30 seconds i will never know, shit should be studied by scholars. this song is basically just a Skrillex Greatest Moments compilation. i would also say it's basically his Windowlicker? – i wouldn't be surprised if that's intentional knowing how big of an Aphex fan he is. there's many little things i could obsess over, the weird little "ghost" break @ 2:08, the way the Angry German Kid chops come in, the whole Andy Gibb sample chop break. especially that latter, i feel like this is the only time sonny has ever tapped into chopping a sample in this fashion, besides CAT RATS where he also uses this sample (also super underrated track and could have fit well on this ep. whenever i think of that track i think of the old youtube uploads with the shattering white skrillex logo - iconic!). i like to think sonny had heard Cross or some other french house and said fuck it imma do that lmao. this song is awesome and my fav of his. WEEKENDS!!! is the next track, to be honest i'm less fond of the original and more fond of the Zedd remix which the song is paired with on streaming. i first heard it in the outro of a minecraft youtube video back in the day lmao. as you would. skrillex and sirah in this era were like bread and butter, i think it would be awesome if they met up and collabed again. after F*CK U SKRILLEX anything is possible.

i'll be honest i don't really get much of the Fucking Die 1 slander in the thread already, i think it's a fine average dubstep track. i appreciate the "datedness" of this song but admittedly it might be the nostalgia because i was listening to a lot of really amateur dubstep at the time. all in all i don't care that much because i treat fucking die 1 and 2 as one long song with two parts. i do agree tho that fucking die 2 is the better side – holy shit is it really 5 minutes long? the CRAZY LADY sample is iconic. i really do like skrillex's whole sampling game at the time of just sampling youtube videos of people screaming. i really wonder why he gravitated towards that sample so much. also why that coughing sample.

i don't really have much to say about Do Da Oliphant other than that the main vocal chop is awesome. i am only discovering now while i was collecting my notes that the sample was found (The Bees – Chicken Payback), crazy. i really enjoy how all the songs in the latter half of the ep cohesively blend into each other – the DIE! sample in here, and then the vocal chop going into With You Friends. speaking of, With You Friends has legit made me emotional and is one of his best early tracks (and probably one of the best early 2010's EDM songs ever?). i’m in the minority that actually prefers the original version over Long Drive – the original version is more lively, and you can’t really have the former without the latter such and such. i recognize that some of the vocal chops in here are taken from what i can assume is a demo version of All I Ask of You, which shows up on the next ep and that's pretty fun to notice. the whole breakdown and keyboard solo(s) are incredible.

my final thoughts: this ep needs to be on fucking streaming. i’m assuming the only thing holding it back is the label or the uncleared samples (which ifaik is the only time skrillex is obviously using uncleared samples, and i guess he felt comfortable doing that as the ep was released as a free download). and dare i say this is probably a “perfect” EP? imo it does everything an EP should do and more, not too long, not too short. it's also probably skrillex’s most cohesive project to date because he always seemed to be more of a singles/tracks/live artist than an album artist. that becomes clearer as we go deeper into his discography and he creates more attempts at full length albums. in retrospect, this ep feels more wholistic through and through than any of his other releases. My Name is Skrillex is so admirable because it captures the perfect sweet spot post refining his dancy Myspace sound and before he dove head first into defining brostep.

"bye bye"

bonus, i wanna shoutout the original teaser for the ep: https://vimeo.com/12349901 made by the designer who did skrillex's logo and all the album covers up to bangarang. the way the whole ep is compacted into a medley of snippets is incredible

[hprara]

this ep needs to be on fucking streaming. i’m assuming the only thing holding it back is the label or the uncleared samples

i didn't realize it wasn't on streaming. i could've sworn it was on iTunes at the very least when I was younger. i may just be misremembering.

bonus, i wanna shoutout the original teaser for the ep: https://vimeo.com/12349901 made by the designer who did skrillex's logo and all the album covers up to bangarang. the way the whole ep is compacted into a medley of snippets is incredible

this rules, i've never seen this. do people even still do video teasers/commercials like this for new releases now? i feel like when TV was more dominant there was more promo materials along the lines of this. with snippets and all.