Sonny found no joy in fame or magazine covers…
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[6.00]
Jake Cleland: I quite enjoyed the reeniewniew and the dewwwwommm but the pffff-pftschhhhhh could’ve used a little more emphasis to bring it forth in the mix. Skrillex is obviously a talented dubstep musician with a variety of influences, and the way he’s borrowed from [a deranged cat smashing its head into the wall of a tin shed] and [a group of cultists painfully dying by ingesting poisonous Flavor Aid] and combined that with his trademark [horse being kicked to death by a farmer wearing steel-toe boots] for this track suggests he has no intentions of slowing his acclaimed run. That said, the violins were not nearly distorted enough.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: Does Skrillex qualify as brostep? I know of two simultaneous, mutually exclusive definitions: the unsubtle, headbanging dubstep for the unwashed, uncool adolescents that writers never were, or the feminized, poppy dubstep for the trendy, blindly enthusiastic girls that dude writers never were. Skrillex is also on the cover of SPIN, which is bound to piss a few people off. None of this preparation for judgment, however, will tell you that “Ruffneck” is a remix of t.A.T.u’s “All the Things She Said” for piano, strings and dubstep fuckery. That’s OK to like, right?
[7]
Jer Fairall: Expect Sonny Moore to take some shit in certain circles for the fact that his previous act was the emo/post-hardcore outfit From First To Last, as if there’s any question of purity or authenticity in a genre (dubstep) that everyone is leaping aboard this year anyway. His everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach is eager but ultimately exhausting, piling noises on top of each other like Trent Reznor might if he lacked any awareness of space, dynamics, subtlety, melody or range.
[4]
Iain Mew: Reminds me a fair bit of the Flux Pavilion that we covered earlier this year, although “Ruffneck” has its screeeeEEEEEEE:quiet bits ratio stacked much further in favour of the latter, with a rather elegant faux-classical thing going on. Could do without the silly voices on top, but this particular aural assault trick is still exciting.
[7]
Jonathan Bogart: I was excited for a little bit: dubstep with strings and piano? But then the breakdowns come in, sounding like every dubstep breakdown I’ve ever heard, and my enthusiasm waned. Still, if we must have them, I like hearing the classy stuff break down.
[6]
Brad Shoup: With the full flex, Skrillex employs drops as a chaotic element – not the standard dubstep chaos of senseloss, but of a producer’s possibilities. They deliver a ton of great dissonant sonorities to chase the stringed theme. He’s turned glitch and filth over for a more standard set of edits and rich layers; fans of the form may cry out for the dirty, but I can’t get over the sheen.
[10]