Is deadmau5 or skrillex still relevant

#1

Are they do they still even music anymore or have they just become another gimmick or did they just move on to running a label…

Also Its not idmf if idmf doesnt have a skrillmau5 thread

#2

i think skrillex just like produces pop music now, like justin bieber and ed sheeren and the like.

no idea what deadmau6 is up to

#3

I actually hate that I know this but…Deadmau5 did a live set at his studio(i assume because COVID-19 cancelled sets).

So he’s still doing stuffs. No idea what he’s making lately or whatever. Just saw this on my YT feed.

Skrillex, like @stemcollector said, I think does like pop collabs. Last I had heard which is a long time ago he was doing trap/reggae stuffs though.

#4

Relevant is kind of a personal term. Have either of them ever been super relevant to me or IDMf? I don’t think so. Are they relevant to electronic music? To the extent that the mau5 is still selling out stadiums on tour and improving his live show, and the extent that wubs pretty much dominated the last decade of electronic music and crept over into pop, skrillex still matters, so I’d say yes to both commercially. If either of them offered to produce a track with me, I’d sell out in a heartbeat. That says something, I think.

#5

Joel knows his shit. Dude is hands on with everything from sound design to light show programming and more. He’s not just dropping samples into a template or “pushing buttons” even though he’s the one that said they’re all just pushing buttons. He seems to have more skillsets than should fit into a human brain. I’ve always thought its unfair he gets lumped in with the other brostep artists, when he seems to be more akin to a Klayton than a Skrillex. As far as current relevancy, I have no idea what he’s actually doing at the moment.

#6

I’m cool with the Mau5 these days–like I said above I used to be a popular electronic music hater–but the one thing that still irks me is this “we are all just pushing buttons” quote. I’ll preface this by saying I get that his fans don’t care that he isn’t DJing. They go to hear his music with a big light show. That’s fine. And frankly you couldn’t do a show like he puts on with a DJ who is more or less ad libbing a mix. And I don’t know what he is doing with Ableton when he is performing but going through a set list on Ableton (he might well be doing something things in real time or ad libbing bits and bobs) is 100% different than mixing tunes live and adapting to an audience.

I mean the dude is famous for good reason, because people like what he does. But as a raver himself he should know there are some very relevant differences between how electronic musicians perform. Yea, all our performance devices have buttons and we push them but that is a vast oversimplification imo.

Edit: to clarify I’m not saying one is better than the other just different performers are doing very different things on stage.

He did do some kind of live stream from his studio in the last week. Dunno if it was like a live jam or what. But I haven’t seen him on a flier in ages. Maybe Vegas residency?

#7

Relevant to what?

#8

To muzak industry…roo

#9

Where is music industry right now?
With marketing and music?

#10

Last I heard he was hospitalized for drug use or something like dehydration or whatever not sure.

#11

Deep thoughts with jack handey ahead

Spotify listeners don’t really reflect popularity well, but I like to use them to see what ballpark they’re in. Skrillex has over 13M and Deadmau5 has almost 3M, so it looks like if anything, Deadmau5 is the forgotten one… or the one who forgot to pay for his bot plays last month.

Both artists have a ‘new content’ alert at the top of their page, so it looks like they’re both actively releasing stuff in order to stay relevant, or at least attempting to.

Deadmau5 has shitloads of albums, whereas Skrillhead only has 2. I pressed play on the newest Skrillex and it’s completely unrecognizable from his early style. Being a dumb 21-year-old at the time of his heyday and even having some nostalgia for that sound, this stuff just sounds like absolute mush with vocalists repeating phrases in a chanting manner (not really ‘rapping’ so much). The next song just came on and it sounds like a really bad autotuned female vocalist, maybe like someone who won The Voice or X Factor and has absolutely no personality. Now the vocals are getting annoyingly looped again. This is bad. I hope you enjoyed my play-by-play listening experience there.

Now it’s time to press play on the newest Deadmau5 LP. It sounds well-produced, like the stuff 13-year-olds use in the background of their tutorial videos. Although it’s better than anything I could pull off, it sounds like that background music that’s meant to be turned way down so that you can barely hear it. Play this in your store and I’ll probably spend an extra $5 because my brain is just barely being kept awake by it. Song #2 follows suit, it just sounds like music that belongs at the end of the movie. I’m waiting for a deep voice to say something like "With great power comes great responsibility, spiderman:.

Sound-design is great here, and the songwriting feels formulaic and calculated for both artists. Guest vocalists never miss a note, nothing is ever out of sync, and it’s all perfectly autotuned and quantized if they do. It’s just so incredibly clean. This is the music robots would choose over our ‘human’ music with flaws, dirt, and nasty stuff. This is the exact opposite.

I think the reason why I liked this kind of stuff when I was 21 was because I was drunk all the time. It just doesn’t do it for me because it lacks the distortion, anger and manly feelings that I resonate with. It sounds so happy or sedated and that’s like the exact opposite of what I am, so it’s just not a fit.

Well, that’s that. Now I have to listen to a bunch of angry or fast white people music to cleanse my palette.

#12

Nice deep dive. I knew Skrillex was doing more like Trap and pop and producing for pop vocalists.

#13

They got me into making electornic music on my broken down HP while I was in high school back in 2012 and 2011, but these years They are not what they used to be. Deadmau5 still makes music, and it is different from his old stuff, but definitely not as big as they were. Electronic music then to me was in a good place although I know people thought it wasn’t. I think now it has some how managed to get even more repetitive as far as mainstream goes. The underground (if you can call Vaporwave and them ore experimental stuf underground) is where its at.

#14

I think the complaint a lot of old ravers didn’t like about Deadmau5 and Skrillex is that they were some of the first to bring the music out of the underground. A lot of what I don’t like about dance culture now are the mega festivals. Edit: I’ve been to them. Just not my thing. Also, its all stupid expensive. Sorry I can’t support a fest that charges over $5 for a regular bottled water and basically doesn’t have free water on site. At Ultra Miami (I wasn’t there) I swear a friend told me waters were almost $10.

There is still very much a dance underground where people are playing good house and techno if that is what one is looking for. Like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania around city centers have tons going on every weekend everything from “twue” techno and house, to commercial 4x4 to bass music.

@Ramxes what is a super repetitive mainstream electronic song? I’m somewhat out of touch with all that.

#15

I found this when I was binge-watching youtube. Kind of cool, actually

#16

I’ll defo give this a watch.

#17

I really liked Skrill’s tunes when he blown into the mainstream, when everything was about the brostep. Never really got into Deadmu5’s music. But i only listened to Skrill’s tunes for a few years and then I stopped following him. However he has been changed a lot. I just give a listen to a few of his new tunes (anything after the alien emoji album’s tracks) and then I can’t really say those real Skrillex tunes, you can slap any other EDM star’s name on them.

#18

uuhhh… yes. deadmau5 aka joel zimmerman is a mega star in the electronic dance community. plus he’s very similar to tiesto in terms of his companies he owns. skrillex? naah. skrillex was just a fad cuz he was probably broke and needed to pay his bills if i were to honestly guess. i do hope he pops back up in 3-5 years but it’s unlikely. but yeah deadmau5 is massive. completely massive & my absolute favorite music artist for electronic in general. Not because his music is brilliant, it’s not- it’s simple easy listening. But he is a WICKED business man

#19

yeah skrillex is low quality- sensesfailed was good. but those days are over. sonny moore needs to get his passion back and lay off alcohol

#20

I bet being in the limelight sucks after a while. I don’t blame any of those guys who step away and live a more private life. I wouldn’t want any of the baggage that comes with fame, either, if I ever had the choice

Also I thought that was From First To Last but they might as well all be the same band