Oh my God. Hi everyone. Fthony Utano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Skrillex project, Fuck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol but Ur Not!! <3.

There's a heart there.

Yeah, here we have a brand new surprise drop in project from producer, songwriter, dubstep, kingpin Mr. Sonny Moore, aka Skrillex, who dropped this new album out of the blue on April Fool's Day of all days. It has a preposterous album title, as you can already see, and cover art, too, which allegedly contains just graffiti that was posted up by someone near Mr. Moore's residence, which, as funny as and the title of this album is, and I'm glad that Skrillex is turning that into something silly and entertaining... that's weird. Why would you do that? I mean, I don't really know too much about Skrillex on a personal level, but that just seems like unnecessary energy to be throwing in his direction, but whatever.

Either way, though, while this release did seemingly come out of nowhere, Sonny Moore has been creatively a lot more active as of late, and what he is putting out here just like a continuation of that momentum.

As you may remember, he did have back to back albums drop in 2023, Don't Get Too Close, as well as Quest for Fire. These were two very different records with very different missions. The former of which contained a lot of very tacky and hyper commercial combines of pop and rap and EDM. And while the latter of the two wasn't necessarily mindblowing in a general sense for electronic music across the board, it did seem like a more general effort to do something that would actually entertain the heads, as it were. The production was more nuanced on this thing. The songs were not so pop-centric, and the feature list actually contained a lot of interesting crossovers with the likes of Fourtet, Mr. Oizo, Dylan Brady, as well as Porter Robinson, to name a few.

I will say in recent years, Skrillex has been making the effort to present himself in a way that's just a bit more casual, using his platform to draw attention attention to collaborators and songs that don't just simply serve to give fans the most lowest common denominator styles and strains of electronic dance music, which honestly is great. That's refreshing. Not just from the standpoint of hearing some better output from Sonny, but it's also been a breath of fresh air to see people approaching him and talking about his music in a way that doesn't seem so polarizing and over-the-top aggressive.

I remember early on in my reviewing career when I first had some thoughts on his Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites EP, which I liked, by the way. But there was so much undue hate behind that project that enjoying it at the time was like a blasphemy. It just felt like a lot of people were hating the record for what it was labeled as and what it wasn't as opposed to what it actually was, which is just like fun, bold, hype, electronic music to have a good time to. Sure, while it's not as cool or as heady or as much of a headphones listen or as immersive as, let's say, Burial's Untrue – amazing album, by the way – Scary Monsters is still an entertaining and respectable project, and certainly a happier medium than some of the more dumbed-down stuff that Skrillex would put out after the Bangerang era.

Either way, I don't think I need to regale you at this point with the rise and fall of the bro-step wave of the 2010s or remind you that a lot of Skrillex's relevancy culturally washed out with that trend. However, that has proven to not entirely be a bad thing because obviously, nothing stays popular forever.

It's nice to have change. But also, I feel like this has given Sonny the opportunity to redefine himself and what he does and just do it on his own terms, which I think is why we're getting this random album with a goofy title with a flow and a tracklist that honestly is an interesting one. In fact, I'm surprised more electronic music artists don't put out formal albums in the way Skrillex has here, because what we have on this record is 34 tracks that span across 46 minutes of run time.

If you do the math there, I think you can figure out that doesn't leave a lot of time for each song individually, and that's because this is not your normal album format over here, because as electronic music fans know, a key part of any artist's success is their ability to DJ, put together a mix, a continuous run of grooves and songs and collaborations and ideas, built off material that may be new, may be old, may be unreleased, might be someone else's. What it is really depends on the DJ and what they have out, what's popular, what genres and sounds they specialize in.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I would hope at this point that anyone watching this channel knows what a DJ set is. Well, the tracklist of this record feels less like that of a formal album and more like a mix. It's just that all the various shifts and changes and transitions and builds are cut down into bite-sized chunks, many of which last like one to two minutes max, and just results in a series of tracks that are just hitting you with one build, drop, refrain, melody, and breakdown after the next. And not a second of this record is wasted. It all goes toward either building up towards something big or hitting you with a memorable collab, chorus, or throwing out a lot of self-aware humor, too.

There's been a lot of commentary around this project with the persistent DJ tags from DJ Smokey throughout the project, who is a relatively underground producer and is giving us a lot of very gravely voiced announcements and commentary, too, some of which is deeply ridiculous. "Good Skrillex, that's a good boy." Or another one where he says, "I have Skrillex trapped in my basement. Play this at full volume or I'll put him in the hole." Occasionally, we get some producer humor as well with Smokey saying, "I heard that snare took him two years to make."

There's also one drop on the record that is built up toward, but then taken out with Smokey announcing "This drop was hijacked by Atlantic Records, and now it's just being replaced with silence."

So yeah, there is a tone about this album – if you couldn't already tell from the title – that is a little satirical and self-aware, which in one breath, I think does contrast from the production and progressions going on throughout these tracks, because we are talking about something that it's pretty serious bass music. What Sonny Moore is doing on this record is heavy, is exciting, is really detailed and hard-hitting. Meticulously crafted, too. It's just a sonic assault on all fronts.

Now, I have read some complaints about the producer tags and chatter throughout the album that it's too much and it's distracting, and I get it. Maybe on the surface, it doesn't seem to match that well with electronic music that comes across as so heavy and aggressive and out there. But also, don't the tags really match the energy of the music when you really think about it?

Because Skrillex on this record is really going back to just that old-school, super-aggressive, over-the-top strain of Bro-step with the occasional loose, bassy, wonky groove here and there. I mean, some of the most outlandish modern music that has hit the mainstream, it literally It sounds like... [makes bizarre sound effects.] I feel like the various tags throughout the project just acknowledge just how nuts this style of music is.

Now, as far as going over some specific moments on this album, that is a little difficult to do given that there are 30 tracks, and many of them just fly by so quickly. However, that is part of the point on this thing, just this never-ending engagement that is created by just constantly changing evolution. Drop after drop after drop after drop after drop after drop.

Standout "Spitfire" I think, has some of the strongest refrains on the entire record. In fact, I wish there were more tracks on the LP that were as catchy as this one because Hawaii Slim's vocals are just so sticky. On top of it, the drop that comes toward the back end of the track is just classic Skrillex in a million ways.

We also have the anthemic "Voltage" on the album, which makes the finish of this record more anthemic than it would have been otherwise. This is also an unreleased track, previously unreleased, which makes for one of many moments on the album where Skrillex is referencing back to older material and ideas. If you are listening to this project as a hardcore and maybe even an older Skrillex fan, you may feel like this mix here is like a victory lap of all things Sonny Moore has been during the era of Skrillex. Just really a celebration of all of that.

Proceeded by this track, we have "San Diego VIP", where the bass tones are just absolutely screaming. I don't think I've heard just nastier, more guttural bass on any Skrillex track ever. There are some vaguely exotic groove switches on "Baby Royal", which I thought were a standout on the project. Also, this track has these writer credits attached, which is insane. I mean, I'm sure it comes down to the sample work and everything on the song, but this amount of names is impressive for a song that is not even a minute long.

There are pockets of this mix where Skrillex is hitting us with very peppy, persistent dance groove. Songs like "Zeet Noise", "Booster", as well as "Freaky VIP". There are cuts that team up to bring us more melodic and blissful passages, too, such as "Morja Kaiju VIP", as well as "Korabu", which features Drain Gang affiliates VARG 2 and Whitearmor.

I will say, generally, the more easygoing cuts on this project do make for some of the blandest moments here. I do wish there were more exciting and engaging variations away from just this pure bro-step sound. A lot of the songs on this record seemingly hit, because I do know Sonny's taste and abilities reach outside of that world, but that's just really, again, the focus of this project for the most part.

As a result, there are a lot of tracks and moments that do blend together in a way that is a bit unflattering. But still, when I am locked in on this project, one thing I can give Skrillex credit for is that no two drops on this thing sound exactly the same. Each one seemingly has its own quirks and samples and textures as well as groove mathematics. It never feels like I'm hearing the exact same idea again and again and again and again, even if what's going on here – much of it is all shooting for the same emotional response.

So, yeah, while I think you could call what is going on with this project gaudy or maybe tacky from an electronic dance music perspective, what you cannot say about this project, though, is that it's generic, that it is boring. Not only because the experience of listening to this thing is just so obviously thrilling, but the details that go into every moment here definitely put on display that there is more to what Skrillex does than I think some people are willing to give him credit for.

And yeah, that just becomes more apparent on a project like this that comes across more like a mix, a thrilling live set, if you will. Which is why I would say I'm feeling a decent to strong 7 on this thing.

Anthony Fantano, Skrillex, Forever.