The two songs with vocalists are 'Kyoto' featuring Sira and 'Summit' featuring Ellie Goulding. Sira is a female rapper and singer who is based in Los Angeles. And Ellie Goulding is an English singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. The last track contains an orchestral suite called 'Skrillex Orchestral Suite by Varien'. It's a bonus track on the album, the only bonus track. Someone mentioned in the comments that this orchestral track could be in the video game Starbound, an open world space sandbox game that came out recently. It really could! It's so video-gamish in its theme and variations.
"Musically, Bangarang has multiple influences of electro house, dubstep and progressive house, while also incorporating elements of trance, drum and bass, rap rock, experimental rock and ska. It features syncopated rhythmic build-ups, technical breakdowns and "chopped-up" vocal hooks, as well as multiple vocal samples. Its lead single, "Bangarang", charted in multiple countries worldwide and reached the top ten in Australia and Belgium."(Wiki)
The first tune 'Right In' is a quick little number with synthesizer keyboard jabs as a robotic kind of voice is saying "Right. Right in."
My favorite song on the album is the second song, its called Bangarang. I don't really know why this song is so great to me. It just has great bass drops and the lyrics "Bangarang" just sounds so sick as the bass drops and there's all these crazy sounds going off man it's totally cool! Some of the sounds go high pitched, kind of reminds me of an alarm on a car. Then there's a cool chord change in the middle of it, and an interesting bridge with nice guitar lines playing. Bass! This song makes me want to dance, and I don't even know how to dance. This sounds like this would be a good song in a club.
Next, is 'Breakin' a Sweat', which is a collaboration with the Doors. I think the collaboration part is the fact that they used some old Ray Manzarek keyboard parts in the song to give it some extra flair. Musically, this song is more of the same formula from the first songs. There's a short lyric, 'Breakin' a Sweat', 'that's good', and then there's bass drops and lots of choruses. Oh yeah, they use like a Jim Morrison interview talking about how in the future they'd be using machines to make music and stuff. So that's the Doors' input on the song. "Ok, play that beat again" is another cool line from this tune. After a while the bass drops start to get gimmicky, like is that all this guy can do? But they're so cool at the same time!
Next is 'The Devil's Den'. This is another tune I heard from twitch.tv and its another favorite of mine from Skrillex. It starts off with this really cool simple melody before breaking off into bass drops and synthesizer and drum stuff. This song has some interesting chords in the middle of the tune, really making the song climax, and then the bass drops. This tune just has the lyrics "the devil's den" and "devil". Then there's like a robotic voice doing wub wub wubs. Then the original melody comes in and puts everything in perspective and bringing it full circle.
'Right on Time' starts off with the simple statement "Right on time". This one kind of sounds more like a progressive tune because it relies less on bass drops than the previous tunes and more on creating interesting music with the drums and bass. And they do a great job with it. This song was a collaboration with other progressive house and edm producers 12th Planet and Kill the Noise. This song I could definitely see being heard to at a club. Whereas with the other songs I don't see them as being played at a club. I see it more as something you'd just play chilling at your house, like I am right now.
'Kyoto' has some cool guitar power chords. And the rap elements of it is actually pretty good. I'm not usually a fan of rap, especially female rap artists but the music here is actually cool. The fact that there's a dedicated vocalist means that they keep the song simple but the lyrics add more flavor than just a cool catch phrase that is being said over and over again throughout the song.
The last song is 'Summit', the most relaxed and chill song of the album. But the vocals here give it that extra edge, that great sound. Ellie Goulding's vocals remind me of a lonely night looking up at the stars. The song give off that kind of vibe. There's more chord changes and melodies and synthesizers and drum stuff going on in this song than in the other tunes.
Lastly, I didn't think Skrillex was all that great because I'm not generally a fan of edm or dubstep. However, the music is very catchy and it grows on you fairly easily! Especially after you've heard the songs a couple times. I read in LA Record magazine about how Todd Rungren was praising Skrillex and that's kind of what got me to listen to a whole album of them. Before I just heard a couple songs and there and just thought they were super popular and stuff. I like how Todd said that you really can't sing Skrillex, that it's really just catch phrases and sounds. It's cool like the guy from Skrillex, Sonny John Moore, is from LA. It's also cool how before he was doing solo albums like this on his own, he was the singer of post-hardcore band called From First to Last. I'll definitely try to find some of their work. When people think of this music, they think it takes no talent and that the creators just made it using simple bass drop patterns on music software on their PC. But listening to this I think it takes a lot of skill to write something that will keep people engaged and listening without getting bored of the patterns. Some say the bass drops get old and formulaic. But this album won the Best Dance/Electronica Album award at the 55th Grammy Awards, as well as the Best Dance Recording award for the title track.In addition, Rolling Stone named Bangarang the fourteenth best EDM album of all time. I feel like we live in a time period where it's better to have a solo career rather than playing in a band. Rather, I think it's better to produce your own music, use music software on your PC, and try to distribute your music online. People like Skrillex have been doing these types of music for a long time but I feel like we live in the time period where edm and dub-step has really come into its own. It's all the rage and all the kids love it. It's super popular. I feel like this kind of stuff might be the future of pop music, because all you need is to learn how to make music on a laptop and just go from there. That would create a lot of musician, even if the term musician would be used rather loosely. Also, might I add that I think Skrillex's haircut is just super cool. Nowadays I see men and women both have his style of haircut. I know its not really a 'Skrillex' haircut but I hadn't seen anyone wearing their hair long with sides shaved off until Skrillex became super popular. But I know really its more of a punk kind of hair style. Anyways, its pretty cool.
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