Written by JFitz
When looking at the history of dubstep, there’s a narrative throughline that’s pretty easy to grasp onto. Dubstep originated in the late 90s garage scene of London boroughs like Brixton and Croydon, combining 2-step beats with influence from Jamaican dub music for a heavier, more bass-centric sound (Sande). The genre grew steadily in popularity throughout the next decade with support from UK pirate radio and BBC Radio DJs John Peel and Mary Ann Hobbs, but it exploded in popularity as it reached American airwaves in the late 2000s (de Wilde). It was around this time that former From First to Last vocalist Sonny Moore began to release music under the name Skrillex, and the new form of dubstep he popularized on EPs like My Name is Skrillex and Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites became both popular and critically acclaimed, albeit with significant pushback from genre purists.
While many UK artists like James Blake and Mount Kimbie were fostering the development of a colder, more ambient “post-dubstep” sound, Skrillex and his colleagues were seemingly eager to do the opposite. Their sound, which was given the derogatory label of “brostep”, added a newfound level of intensity and aggression to the genre, adding more abrasive synths and percussion while putting less focus on the low-end of the mix. The bass drop, an element seen intermittently in regular dubstep, became the centerpiece of the track. These changes produced significantly more pop appeal, and a wave of new artists made dubstep one of the most prominent sounds in electronic music as well as the greater pop landscape.
While brostep saw great success, its inclinations towards maximalism and pop structure became a double-edged sword as the genre reached peak saturation, and a lack of innovation quickly made the drop-and-wub structure a target for ridicule. By 2014, many artists had moved on from brostep completely, including Skrillex, who would mostly work as a collaborator and producer for other artists with a greater focus on pop, trap, and house music. In many people’s eyes, the quest to make dubstep as intense and kinetic as possible killed its initial appeal and turned the entire genre into self-parody.
However, many of those who grew up with artists like Skrillex, Rusko, and Knife Party would show respect for the sound of brostep near the end of the decade, and artists within genres like hyperpop and digicore would begin to implement it into their sound with equal parts inspiration and nostalgia. For many, the unapologetic nature of brostep was its greatest strength, and its status as a “dead” genre made it ripe for revitalization. The 2020s would see dubstep revival flourish in both its minimalist and maximalist forms, and Skrillex’s 2023 album Quest for Fire would see him re-implement the sound of dubstep into his work in tandem with house music and juke.
Cut to two years later, on March 31st, 2025: a Dropbox link for a new Skrillex album is sent to fans through his mailing list and released to streaming the following day, with no promotion. It’s a brostep album, and it’s hosted by DJ Smokey. Yes, the “legalize nuclear bombs” guy.
F-CK U SKRILLEX YOU THINK UR ANDRY WARHOL BUT UR NOT!! <3 is a commendable effort from Skrillex and friends, if only for how it feels like a rebuke of his critics and detractors, as well as a celebration of the creativity and collaborative spirit that has defined his career. The album, consisting of tracks from as early as 2010 to this year, is comprised of the same wubbing basslines, glitchy synths, and positively filthy drops that defined his early work. However, he seems acutely aware of the genre’s inherent absurdity, especially a decade removed from its peak, and gladly leans into it as much as possible. While his early work utilized samples from viral YouTube videos, the appearance of DJ Smokey collaborators Shadoe Haze and Binx marks an abject move into meme territory, as they regularly interrupt tracks to shout out Nuke Radio or threaten to put Skrillex in “the hole” if the listener doesn’t turn the volume up. The album also reflects some level of spite toward Atlantic Records, Skrillex’s longtime distributor, with the loose structure and minimal promotion displaying just as much spite as the explicit name-drop during its runtime (for your own sake, I won’t spoil what it entails).
FUS’s 34 tracks each move quickly and without restraint, often building to the drop within the first 30 seconds before catapulting the listener into the next song with little reprieve. Sometimes, a track lasts only long enough for a Shadoe Haze one-liner and vocal passage, while the next contains the resulting drop. The result is like a musical rollercoaster, building up just enough potential energy to propel you through a 100-foot loop and taking a flash photo when you whip around a corner. It’s undoubtedly exhilarating and fitting for an album that explicitly asks you not to skip tracks, yet the breakneck pace may result in some trouble identifying when exactly ideas start and stop. On a relisten, the ad libs from guest artists and DJ Smokey associates often serve as better mileage indicators than the stated tracklist. Nonetheless, the album works as a singular piece of music, reminiscent of a DJ set at a festival or Boiler Room, and the pacing is deft enough to make weak points few and far between.
The consistency of sounds and musical ideas is also something to behold; determining when a song was produced becomes a challenge of its own, as nothing really feels “dated” relative to other sounds throughout the runtime. Many are identifiable as prior unreleased work, with the most obvious being his alternate remixes of songs such as “HUMBLE” by Kendrick Lamar and “Sicko Mode” by Travis Scott, yet the unreleased tracks do not feel out of place or distracting. If anything, they’re deeply rewarding to fans who recognize them, especially in the case of the album’s penultimate track, “Voltage”. Originally intended for a project of the same name before the theft of a hard drive prevented its release, the song has become infamous in the dubstep community through the release of leaks and rough demos. Fourteen years later, the track is presented as a climactic final statement without any snark or parody, further displaying the album’s reverence for dubstep’s past as well as its diehard fans.
FUS’s litany of guest features are also well utilized, with longtime collaborators like Virtual Riot and Boys Noize fitting in perfectly alongside those who were directly inspired by his work such as Dylan Brady. The most interesting collab may be swedm®, a nascent music collective with artists like Bladee, Whitearmor, jamesjamesjames, and bgirl on its roster, alongside Skrillex and DJ Smokey. This group, who appear extensively in the album’s second half, embodies the connection between his early work and recent musical output, and the long passages that they co-produce feel like blueprints for the rest of his career. There is also a deep appreciation for the collaboration that defines much of this album, as namedrops are regular throughout. This culminates in the closing track, “Azasu”, in which Smokey lists off every artist who contributed to the project and thanks the listener for making it all possible. While other artists could make this sort of moment feel cheesy, in this context, it feels more than earned, and almost gives the impression that this is the final curtain call of dubstep itself.
This is, of course, not the end; the past month has seen new releases from mainstays like Subtronics, Rusko, and a collaborative album between Dr P and Flux Pavillion. There are also producers, old and new, who continue to find inspiration in Sonny Moore’s body of work when making music within or outside of dubstep. In truth, the rapturous response this album has received in dubstep circles speaks volumes within the narrative history of the genre. While some producers and fans will always see Skrillex as the man who drove dubstep to its deathbed through a lack of restraint, there will always be many others who see him as their first introduction to a type of music that felt like an entirely different world upon first listen, which impacted them in a way that words fail to adequately describe. Skrillex isn’t Andy Warhol, but he’s one hell of an artist, and I can’t wait to see what he makes next.
Rating: 8/10
References
de Wilde, Gervase. “Put a Bit of Dub in Your Step.” The Telegraph, 14 Oct. 2006, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3655896/Put-a-bit-of-dub-in-your-step.html.
Sande, Kiran. “Dubstep 101.” Resident Advisor, 7 June 2007, https://ra.co/features/822.
