Electronic producers Skrillex and Four Tate When they announced that they would be playing a London nightclub together in 2015, people were surprised and surprised. One music magazine described them as "two of the world's greatest producers from opposite ends of the universe." Another unsuspecting reader: "This is not an April Fool's joke."
Skrillex was 27 at the time, a former California punk rocker who had reinvented himself as the king of collegiate dance music, known for his loud, hard-hitting vocals that sometimes turned dance floors into grid holes. (A few years ago , Rolling Stone wrote that Skrillex sounded like a "kid skater turned gothic pirate" .) Four Tate is 37, a laid-back Brit, whose shimmering electronic tracks have their own pace; His discography includes a number of open jazz trumpeters with Steve Reid. But the collaboration was a success by any measure, perhaps serving as a reminder that in the closed world of electronic dance music, the "opposites of moderation" can be closer than some might think.
Last week Skrillex and Four Tet announced another joint show, this time with third producer Fred... The venue is not a nightclub in London, but a stage in New York: Madison Square Garden. The announcement came on Wednesday, and the tickets sold out immediately. Two days later, on Friday, the trio played a warm-up set in Times Square, cheering the crowd from a converted school bus. So Saturday's show itself was a blast, if not surprising. From 7 a.m. to midnight, spinning like a DJ crew, they got 17,000 people dancing to the music - almost exclusively - as they debated what dance music is and how it works.
The stage wasn't the most comfortable place for a dance party, but no one seemed to mind. Almost everyone was on their feet at least until the end, fueled by a very tall beer or some other means. (At one point, a reveler held up an iPhone so those around him could read the three-word question on the screen : "Who took Ketmin?" Fred said after eight. "We're only four hours away." ."
In the early days of his career, Skrillex was not known for his musical patience. He helped develop his own take on dubstep, a style that saw boredom as its mortal enemy: tracks almost always built on dramatic "drops," the beat suddenly cut in half and a loud, shrilly bassline dominating the mix. . , as someone accidentally grabs the loudspeaker diaphragm with a chainsaw. One of them, from 2011, peppered the song with a sample of a woman screaming, "Call 911 now!" This style is sometimes called "bro-step", referring to insulting the indifferent will of the fans, and Skrillex's first solo album in 2014 began to pay tribute to that reputation: the first track was called "All is fair". In' love step brother.
Skrillex's susceptibility to boredom was one of his greatest assets, keeping him from engaging in the sound that made him famous. In the year In 2015, he collaborated with another producer, Diplo, on Justin Bieber's Now Ü Now; The song, which features dramatic textures and drops (but no aggressive bass lines), has become one of Bieber's biggest hits, and that's saying something, showing listeners that Skrillex isn't synonymous with raucous noise anymore. Last Friday, a day before the show, Skrillex released his second solo album, Quest for Fire, which features collaborations with Fred Again... and Four Tate and some classic Skrillex vocals. It's a smart, uplifting album filled with haunting drums and choppy samples. During the show, Skrillex announced minutes earlier that he had released his new sophomore album, Don't Get Too Close , which is more song-oriented, less sassy — and less attention-grabbing. "It's not about shouting as loud as you can when you're going home listening," he told the audience.
It turns out that this is a big, growing category: dance music for people who don't dance. Fred, 29, has a successful career as a pop producer - there's a great video in the studio of Ed Sheeran creating Bad Habits. But he succeeded as an artist in Real Life (April 14 - December 17, 2020), named after the months it was recorded, and one of the few albums that successfully captures and reflects a sense of angst. He won in the first days of the epidemic. Since then, he has released two series, and last year gave a cameo appearance as part of the hit series Boiler Room. (At one point, a happy partygoer suddenly approaches Fred's stuff and appears to press a button to stop the music. Fred smiles, hugs, and returns the party.)
It was great to see Skrillex get together with Fred Again at Madison Square Garden, a major music festival. They returned several times during the spectacular fire collaboration show Rumble Le Rumble, which featured some of the beat raps from Flowdan, pioneers of the brutal genre that flourished in Britain in the early 2000s. (Some of Skrillex's new productions pay close and loving attention to old forms of dance music.) To celebrate, Skrillex played a new Flodan piece and called out to his crew that night: "Skrillex in the wood / Fred again ... in the forest / Die Vier Tet in the Woods".
The oldest of the three, Four Tete is the least popular and perhaps the most revered: connoisseurs hate Skrillex's cheeky sweets, and then again, Fred's melodic grace might like Four Tete's attention to timbre and atmosphere. And that night he played an important role: he was a troublemaker, he made everyone feel a little uncomfortable. He stays away from the mic, and when it's his turn, he tends to play a darker, louder or more purposeful track than the one before or after. At one point, he surprised audiences the wrong way with ``Rise Up,'' with Bosch and Ricardo Villalobos building and building to a nine-year record breaking and unattainable level. Audiences expecting catharsis were little satisfied until Skrillex entered with a song from his new song, "Leave Me This Way."
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