All of this would be irrelevant if Skrillex weren't suddenly and formidably popular. In the first week of its release, all eight of the EP's tracks placed in the Beatport Top 10. This is a remarkable achievement for a relatively unknown name—the mau5-machine backing has its benefits—all the more so considering it comes from a nominally dubstep artist. If this means that the core Beatport user-base, as close to a mainstream as dance music gets, is going to finally acknowledge dubstep through an artist like Skrillex, I'm concerned. Its one-dimensional aggression and appeal to the lowest common denominator feels like the exact opposite of where the genre began; there's a difference between perversion and evolution. Dubstep is undergoing both processes at once, and the results couldn't be more far apart. I'm not surprised that this EP was number one on Beatport—it's fun and well-produced rave fare—but this music does a dangerous disservice if it's perceived as representative of "dubstep" to an audience that has never come upon it before.
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