For those either enjoying or not enjoying my Skrillex writing in the past 24 hours, you'll be sad/happy to know that this is the last one. After this, I will have covered all of his material that provided them Grammy nominations.
The nomination from this album is for Best Short Form Music Video for "First of the Year (Equinox)." So, of course that's where most efforts will be focused, but I like to give whole bodies of work a chance, so we'll see what the rest of the tracks have to offer as well.
This was still only available digitally until this recent Tuesday (funny - almost did this for new music Tuesday). It's clearly a follow up to Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, and contains four remixes of the song of the same name. Bear in mind, there are only seven tracks total on the album.
Tony Truan directed the video nominated, and it happens to be the first track, so let's jump right in to "First of the Year (Equinox)":
Okay, so the second song we have is "Ruffneck - Full Flex." Actually, I kind of entirely adore the orchestra backing to this. It's beautiful, and neither this element, nor the beats from the machines, over power each other. It's just a great mix all-around.
The second version of the song, "Ruffneck - FULL Flex" takes it up a notch, but I don't think in a good or necessary way. The BPM may be brought up just a little bit. And there's elements added from the machines that do over power it. The good things from the first version are gone in the second.
"Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites - Dirtyphonics Remix" eases us back into our old friend. It' a little much this time around though. There's almost a sound of like... an engine over it? A really not-working-quite-right engine. I think something like this might be why people don't always consider this genre music. So much buzzing and so little melody to be enjoyed.
Trying again, next up is "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites - Phonat Remix." We get a lot of echo, a lot of things taken up way too far in pitch, and something that sounds kind of like a completely different song. I have to hand it to Phonat here, for giving it this out-of-this-world kind of feel. It's certainly a different sound.
I didn't even realize we had gone into "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites - The Juggernaut Remix" for a few seconds until I realized that the sound was different. The beat's taken up a little bit faster on this one, and some real drums seem to be added in to give it a pretty cool effect. I like when rock and electronic try to meld, and this is like right on the cusp of making that work.
"Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites - Kaskade Remix" is exactly the version you'd hear in the dance club, and sounds like everything I've ever heard from Kaskade. It's to a point that you can't entirely tell what the original song was, which makes it hard to buy as a remix.
- "Ruffneck - Full Flex" - Spotify, YouTube
As far the Grammy nod goes, well, you know my opinion on the video. *shudder* It's well done though, so I can totally see the logic behind the nomination. I guess we'll see what happens in February!