



You work in different BPMs and genres but people think there is a stereotypical Skrillex sound. How do you feel about that?





A couple years ago I would get insecure. I found my tendency was to prove something, but it shouldn’t be about proving anything really, just making myself better and doing what I know. With any artist, if you just do what you do, people will realize what that is—even artists who have grown over the years, who have so many different identities. I don’t know any artists who started at one place and kept that same identity from the beginning. The artists I’ve looked up to for my whole life have all changed or switched up their sound. People who follow me will expect that. But the one thing that I’ll never let go of is the energy. No matter what it is, if I can play that live…. That’s what’s cool about my record: I was testing it live with nobody knowing it and got reactions. So that’s all that matters. Skrillex is a DJ, so it’s gotta make people move, it’s gotta make people get up and have a good time. That’s the only real criteria—the sound is second. It’s more about the energy and my personality.





You recorded Recess in bits and pieces with various artists while touring all over the world. How do you feel that affected the vibe of the album?





It was scattered in that sense. And that created what the record was, because it wasn’t like I sat down and had a concept. It was piece by piece, as much as I could work on it. A lot of people think I was gone, working on an album for two years, but I was touring so much last year and not even trying to focus on a record. I didn’t know what I was gonna release. I was flying all over the place. The most I ever worked on my record was maybe two days a week, like actually sitting down in a studio and piecing it together. With art, you have to move in the wind of the moment—you can’t overthink things and that’s the character it will have forever and that record will be that special moment, because it was done that way.





On your Reddit AMA, you said that you recorded with Chance the Rapper’s band, The Social Experiment. How was that different from what you’ve done previously?





I came from bands. I record live stuff all the time. My favorite thing to do is to produce and work with vocalists. Last night I was in [the studio] with Usher and Ed Sheeran and doing this similar thing where I had this basic track and helped them with melodies and they were writing the lyrics and getting in. That’s almost my favorite thing to do— have musicians and piece it all together. With Skrillex, before I got into synthesis, I was sampling a lot and taking pieces and remixing. I worked with bands and I worked with vocalists—I’m a vocalist myself. I feel like it’s actually a stronger point, even working with The Doors on “Breakn’ a Sweat.” All that was done on camera and had to be done in a day, tracking instruments and getting shit. And the big thing with that is being able to read people and going with the flow and not overthinking things, just having the vibe. That song [with Chance the Rapper] in particular, we just rented a studio that night, we were both in Seattle, Chance had a show, both brought the party back to the studio and that was the vibe of the song. It started with a drum loop and a basic chord progression. And then they reinterpreted that with the horns and some keyboards and I brought it back to my computer and took the bass line and chopped it up and fattened it up.

He’s achieved all of this while touring relentlessly, playing major music festivals across the globe, including Ultra Music Festival, Bonnaroo, Coachella, and Lollapalooza. His set with Diplo, as Jack U, was arguably the highlight of the 2014 Ultra Music Festival weekend . The same is true of his dazzling 2014 Coachella performance, where he debuted his audacious new “Mothership” stage setup—a massive spaceship rig designed by Skrillex, his team, and Red Bull that requires “about eight 53-foot tractor trailer trucks to transport.” In April, between Coachella weekends, Skrillex bounces around his downtown L.A. office space—going from a photo shoot, to song placement meetings, to a listening session for OWSLA’s bombastic, forthcoming Moody Good album, and finally to an interview with Complex. He sits in a chill, second-floor studio area with a flat-screen TV hooked up to several video game systems and plaques honoring his one billion YouTube streams and overseas sales. As big a deal as he is, multimillionaire Skrillex, dressed modestly in black Vans, black jeans, and a black shirt, is warm and hospitable, cracking jokes and making sure everyone else is comfortable in his space. Despite a wariness of press born out of the media’s frequent criticism of him, he answers all questions and speaks freely, giving the impression that he is genuinely invested in the conversation about his music and the EDM landscape.