Skrillex: L.A. DJ, Producer Is Boy King of Electronic Dance Music

Dubstep informs Skrillex's 2010 major-label debut, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, which has become a runaway hit in clubs and online. Since the EP's release a year ago, he's been living in hotels and airports. And though that hasn't stopped him from becoming a first-time homeowner in downtown L.A., Moore is everywhere at once. Dance music made a resurgence around the same time the music industry all but collapsed, and he has found effective ways to engage his fans outside traditional realms. Moore's influence on our remixed, mashed-up cultural landscape is only beginning to be felt.

In 2007, French house duo Daft Punk sold out Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. Buoyed by their Coachella performance the year before and dressed as robots, the group performed while perched atop a pyramid, as Tron-inspired images flashed across the stage. The tour made the group legends and forever altered electronic dance music. Videos from the L.A. show spread quickly on YouTube, and the run itself was memorialized on a Grammy-winning live album.

Petco Park show

Skrillex inside Voyeur in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter

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Shrine Auditorium & Expo Center

649 W. Jefferson Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90007

Category: Community Venues

Region: Out of Town

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More About

• Sonny Moore
• Dave Moore
• Skrillex
• Electronic Music
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

At the time, electronic music was just regaining popularity in L.A., after a few years' absence following the rave heyday a decade earlier. In the 1980s a pair of new electronic styles permeated the country: house, a soulful disco offshoot with origins in Chicago, and techno, derived from the synthesizer styles of acts like Kraftwerk and centered in Detroit.

By the end of the decade underground rave parties emerged, and the phenomenon exploded in L.A. during the '90s, popping up everywhere from downtown warehouses to the desert. Today's oversize dance events such as Hard and Electric Daisy Carnival can trace their roots to this scene. While electronic dance music — then often called electronica — flirted briefly with mainstream popularity, it quickly faded. But with Daft Punk as its new robot overlords, the genre blew up bigger than ever.

A 19-year-old Sonny Moore was at the Sports Arena that night, having just recently left his gig as lead singer of From First to Last, a popular band that rode the emo wave of the mid-'00s. He'd launched a solo career and scored a deal with Atlantic but was, he says, in limbo with the label, sitting on a growing pile of songs with no release date in sight. Daft Punk inspired him to take his music to the next level. "I thought, 'God, I wish I could do that,' " he says.

Meanwhile, other dance artists also were plotting their ascents. Toronto-based DJ and producer Deadmau5 — who wears a cartoon mouse mask during his shows, and whose name is pronounced "dead mouse" — played a blockbuster four-night stand at the Hollywood Palladium in August. Veteran DJ Tiësto, meanwhile, recently headlined the 27,000-capacity Home Depot Center, which, his publicist says, was the largest single-headliner DJ show ever in the United States.

Electronic music parties still have a reputation as havens for drug use and chaos, however. A 15-year-old girl died of Ecstasy-related causes at the Los Angeles stop of the Electric Daisy Carnival traveling festival last year, and in July a performance by DJ Kaskade on Hollywood Boulevard turned into a mob scene, with crowd members jumping on a police car.

But fans shrug off the bad press. In fact, Moore relishes the fact that his scene has gained momentum outside of traditional channels. "Ninety-nine percent of these artists aren't a part of MTV and radio," he notes proudly of a group that includes him. "It's so big, but it's so organic."

Indeed, with few exceptions, these artists sell out huge venues and headline major festivals without help from old media. They're blowing up because of digital download sites like Beatport, as well as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Many outsiders don't understand the music's nuances, and electronic music hasn't entirely eclipsed stereotypes of "untz untz" clubs populated by sleazy Euro guys with too much hair gel. In reality, the scene's most popular strain right now is dubstep, which blasts at both giant stadium shows and niche parties like SMOG. Having first emerged a decade ago in the United Kingdom, dubstep creates a sort of aural illusion. It has a fast tempo — typically around 140 beats per minute — but because of the way the beats are programmed, it feels like the song is playing much more slowly. The tracks are peppered by distorted bass lines that sound like lasers, while minor keys and repeated, effect-laden vocals often add a creepy, hypnotic quality. While samples are common, live-in-the-studio vocals are becoming more prevalent, and dubstep even showed up this summer on a pop radio hit, Britney Spears' "Hold It Against Me."

Though Moore doesn't perform dubstep exclusively, his popular track "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" and many of his remixes — like Benny Benassi favorite "Cinema" — incorporate the sound. He also has worked in subgenres like electrohouse and progressive house, and will include reggae-influenced sounds in his next release.

Make no mistake: His influence extends far beyond nightclubs and raves. In fact, his and his biggest colleagues' music often is used to soundtrack conventions geared toward fans of science fiction, comic books and anime, a scene that's also exploding.