Packing 34 tracks of blistering sonic intensity, F*** U SKRILLEX is a tour de force of the artist’s past, present, and future. The album is also a treasure trove for producers of all stripes – full of practical lessons, inspiring creative approaches, and mind-bending technical finesse.
Here are our key takeaways:
1. Got a ton of unfinished ideas? Make an album anyway.
As creators, we tend to sit on a bunch of tracks we hope will release on an EP or album one day. Skrillex is the latest producer to prove we can forget about waiting for that to happen.
Mixtapes of 30+ tracks aren’t new — J Dilla, Flume, Childish Gambino and many other artists have released masterpiece mixtapes full of 90-second songs. But F*** U SKRILLEX is an abrasive reminder that you needn’t expand all your sonic sketches to five minutes for them to be memorable and impacting. Just look at Things I Promised, which manages to get its angst-y, hyper-pop vocal hook stuck in your head with a bare 57 seconds of playtime.
Try it — bounce out around 10 of your dwindling project files and arrange them in a new project window as one continuous mix. Use effects like reverb and delay to transition one beat to the next, and use risers to build up tension as you blend the tracks. You might find that a lot of your sporadic ideas fit better together than you thought.
2. Sample the sh*t out of your earlier ideas and releases
This tip gets thrown around all the time, but Skrillex does this masterfully in F*** U SKRILLEX. From reprising vocal lines from older songs like Summit to taking his brooding bass track, Tears, and remixing it into a high-energy anthem, Skrillex proves there’s always more gold to be mined from your previous work.
Use an old melody line with a new beat, or chop up an unused vocal take and drop it into a near-complete production. It’s amazing how quickly ‘failed’ musical ideas can take on a new character and energy when put in a different context. Even a finished track can be a rich source for one-shot samples, or, with a bit of pitch and time shifting, could become the basis for an ambient interlude. It’s your work – nothing is off limits.
3. Don’t stick to one lane, whatever you do
From track to track, or even second to second, the album hurtles through sounds, styles, and genres at a velocity few can match. On Andy we get classic R&B vocal lines and laser-like synths, and less than a minute later Look at You busts in with crystalline pianos, ethereal glitch, and mangled vocals from Sigur Rós’ Jónsi.
This insane kaleidoscope of an album could never have happened if Skrillex hadn’t spent the last 15 years experimenting, listening widely, trying different styles, and learning, learning, learning.
Pushing out of your musical comfort zone can be challenging, but it is essential if you want to grow. Consciously trying to write in an unfamiliar genre can be a great way of upskilling as a producer, but you can also get surprising results by simply opening up a plugin you don’t know how to use or picking up an instrument you don’t know how to play.
Music making is the art of trial and error – so chuck everything you know in a blender and see what new flavours pour out.
4. Details matter — percussion, filters, effects, sound design and more
What holds F*** U SKRILLEX together is the skill and finesse that undergirds every snare hit, filter sweep, and bass drop. Without those details, we probably wouldn’t listen past track 3, let alone track 30.
Achieving ear-candy with real depth is no easy task, but it starts with mastering the fundamentals. If you’re at an early stage, then get busy learning how to get results from time- and frequency-based plugins. If you’re already a pro at processing, mix things up with unusual sound sources. Skrillex himself has been known to use cracking soda cans for snare drum hits, and the new album is littered with audio curios such as the ASMR-style vocal clicks on Redline Dash and the heavily processed birds on Animals Beat.
Try bringing some household objects or outdoor field recordings into your DAW for further processing – the possibilities are endless.
5. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate
It takes a village to build a career in music. Skillex has always been open about the support he gets from his creative team and his fellow artists. With over 25 collaborators on the record, F*** U SKRILLEX is the purest example of what happens when you bring more creative energy on board. Hell, Korabu has six featured collaborators, and it’s one of the album’s best moments.
The real lesson here, however, is in who Skrillex chooses to work with. The new album has plenty of established artists and newcomers like Naisha, but also platforms up-and-coming creators like Nakeesha, whom many of us might not have heard before.
This is essential for any producer – spot talent early, bring the right people on board, give them a framework, and then get out of the way so they can do what they do best.
6. Nostalgia is one hell of a drug
F*** U SKRILLEX is a career retrospective in the best possible way. Drawing liberally from the genre that he basically created, Skrillex takes us back to the vintage days of dubstep – but he doesn’t stop there. Sure, San Diego VIP gives mega-fans exactly what they’ve been waiting for but Hold On also gives us iconic trap tropes, and Voltage, the album’s euphoric closer, takes us back to a never-quite-released 2012 demo and hints at Sonny Moore’s pre-Skrillex days when he fronted emo band, From First To Last.
Us mere mortals likely don’t have genre-defining back catalogues we can dig into, but we can use nostalgia to our advantage. The music that shaped your youth can still be a rich source of inspiration – you just need to distil those sounds and styles for a modern palette.
Try taking a bygone beat or a classic production style and coupling it with the sounds that define our current moment. Retro doesn’t have to be cheesy, it can be a joyous celebration of a special time and a place – while still moving the musical conversation forward.
