Skrillex’s Quest for Fire is less a proper return to form for the brostep pioneer than a complete rebranding. Although there are still plenty of oscillating basslines to go around on the producer’s second studio album, with a few massive drops to boot, there’s little here that could be considered a direct continuation of 2014’s Recess.
While Skrillex, a.k.a. Sonny John Moore, previously relied on outsourced A-list vocal talent—and continues to do so on songs like the peppy “Ratata,” where an equally game Missy Elliott brags about “knockin’ these fools out like pool sticks”—Quest for Fire also finds him broadening his creative horizons by working with a slew of well-established and budding electronic producers. This results in a smorgasbord of different genre mash-ups that often contrast with one another, where the larger-than-life Joker collab “Tears” and the grime-adjacent “Rumble,” featuring English DJs Fred Again and Flowdan, are sequenced alongside “Butterflies,” a mellower house-inspired throwback that’s assisted by IDM statesman Four Tet.
These tonal contradictions, while at points jarring and a tad distracting with how little they ultimately coalesce, provide the album with a punchy sense of dynamism across its 15 tracks. You’re just as likely to get a fully fleshed out, stadium-sized banger like “Xena,” where Palestinian singer Nai Barghouti’s forceful delivery works in tandem with a series of persistent snares and handclaps, as you are terse sketches of songs such as “Supersonic (My Existence),” a hyper pop-indebted behemoth partly helmed by Noisia, Josh Pan, and 100 gecs’s Dylan Brady.
Another multifaceted highlight comes with “Too Bizarre (Juked),” which, as its title suggests, is a Chicago juke-styled romp that fuses elements of grunge and screamo. Throughout, an abundance of crunchy reverb and shrieked backing vocals complement Swae Lee’s stuttering falsetto, which skitters around the track’s bouncy bassline.
The most impressive moment on Quest for Fire comes when Skrillex links up with avant-garde percussionist Eli Keszler on the ephemeral “A Street I Know,” which serves as a perfect encapsulation of not only the album’s eclectic nature, but of Moore’s ever-growing aesthetic ambitions. Again, don’t call it a comeback: Quest for Fire is the work of an artist who’s more than willing and able to prove himself all over again.
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