Recess
| Skrillex
Recess
Recess is the debut and currently only studio album by American music producer Skrillex, released on March 18, 2014 by OWSLA, Big Beat Records, and Atlantic Records. It was recorded between 2013 and 2014 whilst Skrillex was touring around the world. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
a mix of big-drop dubstep tunes and whatever-works eclecticism, including spots from Chance the Rapper, Diplo, and Michael Angelakos of Passion Pit.
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Rolling Stone
The first full-length release of his six-year solo career shows him fitter, happier and more well-adjusted – it turns out he actually wants to make you dance, not just mosh like a maniac.
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Consequence of Sound
With Skrillex’s synth swipes holding it together, the album cannot help but become disjointed due to the numerous collaborators.
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Sputnik Music
At first, it seems like a harmless, half-decent album. Something that might make you say "oh, haven't seen that before". But as "Recess" plays on, it becomes clear that this is the end of the line for Skrillex.
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Resident Advisor
Recess is Moore's chance to show what he's really about, and while it's definitely a mark above his older work, it still sounds deeply juvenile.
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Earmilk
For the most part it works smoothly, yet there are a few troublesome problems.
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Daily Princetonian
Recess is a genre-crossing electronic album that struggles to find cohesion.
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Spin
Recess’ creative free-for-all — recorded in studios around the world, it features co-producers or guest vocalists on all but three songs, and one of those is a remix of Niki & the Dove’s “DJ Ease My Mind” — suggests that Skrillex is less interested in defining his own sound than in being a kind of multi-tasking A&R instigator/ringleader.
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AllMusic
Reckless fun, frivolous thrills, and fast, loud friends fill this one.
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PopMatters
If anything, Recess will serve as a snapshot in time when Skrillex had the world of EDM in the palm of his hand.
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Fact
If you dislike fidgetty edits and squealing high frequencies fine – go and listen to Eleh – but if you like dance music crashing into the most mainstream of the mainstream on a skateboard, being cheeky, rude, funny and giving you a massive rush when you listen to it, then here it is. Recess.
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GoldenPlec
For ‘Recess’ to have delivered on its expectations there was a lot more of this was needed, but it just doesn’t happen.
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Indientry
The complexity of the music is incredible, considering it was made simply with a laptop and Skrillex’s voice.
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Dancing Astronaut
Tenacious, fearless, and expressive, Recess is a high-octane thrill ride from core to perimeter, coming together as a body of instant Skrillex classics, from the moment the world first heard the hair-raising kicks behind “to get 1000 miles from the earth, a rocket would need this much power.”
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NZ Herald
There's enough advancement on Recess to show Skrillex has moved beyond being a dopey dubstep bully. Now all he needs is a haircut and we can start taking him seriously.
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NME
It’s galactic, explosive and slam-bang, but there’s a ton of sonic surprises too.
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Fortitude Magazine
Overall, Recess has improved upon me steadily from an album I was skipping through, thinking “maybe there’ll be a good song next” to a good album and one worthy of Skrillex’ signature music.
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Scene Point Blank
Recess has some worthwhile moments, but they’re few and far between. The end result is a clunky album that has all the bells and whistles one might expect, but too often gets caught up in all the smoke and mirrors.
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Louder Than War
After releasing a few EPs and igniting many a live set with a fireball of sound, Skrillex has been relatively quiet of late. He’s been putting his debut album, Recess, together and d’you know what, the boy’s done good.
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Craig Reviews Music
Sonny Moore has distanced himself from his past, and Recess is another solid step forward, not differing massively from his past EPs, but marking a progression nonetheless.
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Rock On Philly
Whether you like the music Moore makes or not, you have to appreciate his honest feeling that he is trying to create something good and fun for his fans. In addition, if you give Recess a chance you’ll find that he is making strides forward and branching out as an electronic artist.
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Los Angeles Times
It all still sounds like Skrillex, which is quite a feat but also a bit disappointing. Most of the LP just updates the flavors in his party-punch keg. Skrillex is good enough to kill the Brostep monster he created. He just didn't quite finish the job here.
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NowUC
Skrillex’s music is a lot like cheap alcohol: it’s not appealing in the slightest, it tastes awful, but you can manage to convince yourself that it isn’t so bad when you have had enough of it.
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Renowned For Sound
Love him or hate him, with Recess Skrillex has done a great job in both satisfying his already massive fan-base, as well as planting a few seeds for it to potentially grow.
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MIMO
An inconsistent affair then, but Recess is a far more adventurous listen than his previous array of EPs, thus proving that Skrillex is far more palatable when he changes his default setting.
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Xavier Voigt-Hill
Nothing quite fits together. It’s like a jigsaw where every piece is a polygon with a different number of sides, and only Fatman Scoop provides a shining light at the end of the tunnel. -
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The Pop Break
Recess is a disappointment because we didn’t want to “hate listen” this record; we didn’t want to listen to the album in order to gleefully bash it.
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Earbuddy
an album of mediocre-at-best tracks that feel more like an experimentally unpolished record than a display of his best work. -
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411 Mania
Recess is a poorly produced, haphazardly pieced shambles of a record with no identity, no sense of purpose and very few redeeming qualities. Steer clear.
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Radio Laurier
The album went in many different directions, appealing to a large portion of EDM lovers with tracks that definitely will be played for years to come.
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The West Review
Recess satisfied me, but didn’t really blow me away as did Coast Is Clear and Ease My Mind,if Skrillex could use the same initiative used to craft those tracks across the remainder of the album, we would have had a truly exciting release.
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Hotpress
Moore’s distilling of the dubstep formula into a rave-friendly mash-up of thumping beats, squalling noise and mangled vocal samples hasn’t exactly made him a critical darling – a state of affairs unlikely to improve with the stylistically limited Recess.
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Contact Music
Hopefully Skrillex can release a better full length in the future, but perhaps for now 'Recess' should've just been another EP, even if a full length was due.
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New York Times
“Recess” moves beyond the trademark Skrillex sound in small and sometimes meaningful ways, but it falls far short of upheaval. -
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The Ithacan
Enticing rhythms and powerful drops are brought together in the third studio album “Recess,” from the electro house artist Skrillex, which is packed with fast-paced rhythms that may make listeners head to the dance floor.
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Vantage Point Music
Recess is 3 years too late, and is nothing but a series of mindless bass drops and uninspired verses, with Skrillex lacking any coherent ideas or songs. It’s an entirely joyless and mind-numbing affair.
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The Gatepost
Skrillex’s “Recess” features traditional dubstep, dancehall and big room styling mixed in with influences from all over the world that run the gamut of dance, hip-hop and pop.
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MMIBTY
Overall, Recess is a great album. Very different from his first commercial success in Bangarang and very different in sound from his previous EPs.
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Spectrum Pulse
As it is, this record can't even claim to be as catchy or interesting as previous Skrillex releases, and while there are moments that save it from being truly worthless, they don't do enough.
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Salicious
I wouldn’t call Recess a flop, but I’ll be picking out the gems for my library rather than listening to the album as a whole.
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The Star
Skrillex has dropped a “surprise” — a pleasant one, it turns out — on the internet this week, a full-length album featuring big-name collaborations and refreshing twists on the dubstep beat.
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OZ EDM
Sonny has found the equal balance of pushing the boundaries of new sounds, yet still retaining the classic Skrillex roots he is most loved for.
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Your EDM
With lots of practice and experience in making tunes for every type of emotion, Sonny Moore has succeeded in making a satisfying and captivating debut album.
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Rabbits Black
Recess is, without a doubt, the most ambitious and experimental release by Skrillex to date.
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Under The Gun Review
With Recess, Skrillex has laid out the blueprint for the future of electronic dance music. Now, it’s time to see how the rest of the scene responds and evolves over the course of 2014 and beyond.
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Plugged In
Bass bombs detonate with club-shaking potency on Recess, Skrillex's first official full-length album. But scattered among all that digital ordinance is also some surprising stuff from mostly underground-level guest contributors. -
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Deviating From The Norm
Disjointed at best, coming across as a b-side that should have perhaps stayed filed under “Work In Progress”. With 3 remaining songs, I skimmed through them and pretty much gave up.
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Las Vegas Weekly
Skrillex’s bass aesthetic often breaks hard left for various tangents and impulses. Reggae is a giant influence throughout Recess. Ol’ Sonny won’t win you antagonists over, but he just might surprise you.
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The Media Informer
Skrillex chose to [make] an album earlier in his music career, the album could have been better. However, I am most definitely not complaining as we have various solid EPs and an album now with even more good songs.
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ErickMackAttacks
Recess plays like a club set, and your enjoyment of it will depend on whether or not this is your cup of tea to begin with. The few songs I mentioned will continue to get plays for the rest of this year while I make my favorite songs of 2014 list; the rest will likely fade.
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RichardThinks.org
Skrillex will no doubt remain a hugely controversial figure in the EDM sphere and the wider music world, but with Recess he’s put his money where his mouth his and proved exactly why he’s at the pinnacle of modern dubstep, and gone beyond its traditional parameters too.
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Sturrockblock
The problem with Recess is that it fails to figure out where it is going: should it stay within the brostep genre and go all out with the festival destroying drops or should it try and go a different route.
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Pretty Much Amazing
Ultimately, the highlights here are still middling fare, and mostly, I just couldn’t wait for Recess to be over.
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Flipside Reviews
Recess turns out to be slightly more than the sum of its parts after a few listens but by the time the second-half veers into earshot, you may have already chosen the less painful option to road-drill your own eyeballs to a nearby wall. Which would probably sound more like a Skrillex record than this one. Possibly.
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Music Related Junk
Overall, Recess is an annoying ambling incohesive muddle that’s likely to sell thousands of copies because, well, its Skrillex.
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The Tunesmith
Overall I’m quite happy with it, it’s improving with every listen. I can’t see it making massive waves, but should go down well with his current fanbase. Hopefully, it won’t be quite as long until the next release.
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The Pop Culture Post
Skrillex first LP is well thought out and produced and continue to cement Skrillex's position at the top of the EDM hill. A lot of experimentation that took place over the course of the album only shows growth and perfection of his craft.
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