The Daily Spin II
Skrillex | Quest For Fire
Welcome back to the Daily Spin. For the uninitiated, this is the series in which I review an album every day of 2025.
As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.
Album: Quest For Fire (2023)
Artist: Skrillex
Link:
While the Chainsmokers found themselves garnering more critical reception as the years have gone past, I thought it’d be fun to look at someone who, in my eyes, has almost done the complete opposite - how about Sonny Moore, better known as Skrillex?
In the early 2010s, Moore was known for his flashy, wild electronica, screaming flashes of metal that were the bane of good Christian educators and parents everywhere - this was rancid, lawless music, all the evils of the internet brought to a demonic head in one screeching, rabid vehicle.
It wasn’t like this endeared Moore to fans of dubstep, either - this was new and it was not well-received. Videos went out claiming to unlock the answers to how ‘Skrillex ruined dubstep’, pointing to the cultural heritage of the genre’s beginnings in British grime and jungle music (think Burial’s Archangel here as a rough approximation) and what many saw as a mockery of the art.
And yet, here we are, about fifteen years later, and Moore has redeemed himself tremendously, dropping an album full of drill and grime influence, heavy on the riddim and the trap beats, silly and yet endearingly serious, boastful, quick-witted, and thoroughly, indisputably, dubstep. A ridiculously deep feature list includes electronic luminaries like Porter Robinson, Fred again., grime kings like Flowdan, and the gentle genius of Four Tet - all together, painting an epic picture, collaborating with the singular uniting thread of Moore - and the music. It’s beautiful, spacey, and though not every track is a bonafide banger, it’s frequently enough danceable and molded in the image of what came before it to never be disappointed.
Rating: 8/10
Best Tracks: Butterflies
Worst Tracks: Warped Tour ‘05 with Pete Wentz