Sonny Moore, aka Skrillex, has decided he is building an 11,000 square foot space in LA’s Chinatown to be a studio facility for the “computer musician.”
Recently, the Ibiza International Music Summit presented their first IMS Engage Summit in Hollywood, CA at the W Hotel, in which they paired 12 producers, managers, label-heads, and executives including Skrillex, Pete Tong, Diplo, Def Jam founder Russell Simmons, Beatport COO Matthew Adell, Ultra Records founder Patrick Moxey, and more, to be panelists throughout the day. What coalesced was a series of engaging discussions between a gamut of prominent multi-disciplinarian innovators in electronic music and beyond about the reaches of the genre and how its evolved to where its going. The event drew in global attendees from electronic music and associated industries looking to gain the insight from some of music’s most seasoned and successful figureheads. And that they did.
The highlight discussion of the day was that between Sonny Moore and Summit Series co-founder Jeff Rosenthal, in which Sonny discussed his career before “Skrillex,” how he was $30,000 in debt 3 years ago, and the things he’s had to do and philosophies he’s adopted to succeed. Rosenthal having gone through similar financial difficulties in organizing the first few Summit Series events, was a perfect fit for Sonny in this panel. Whether you’re a fan of Skrillex or not, the panel was nevertheless an really insightful discussion about the past, present, and future of EDM.
In explaining the reason for building the new studio, Moore stated that he wanted to build a place where an artist won’t be criticized for being themselves. “Music and fine art are totally two different things,” he said, “music is like a visceral feeling where you have fun and you enjoy yourself- it’s not meant (at least the type of music I do), to be picked apart and criticized.” Moore went even further, attributing his success to having like-minded, and more importantly, positive people working with him who had that same gut feeling, “because then you can feed off that and complete stuff. If you don’t have that same energy with the people you’re working with, you’ll never get anything done because you’re like ‘man, I should change this’ or ‘it’s not working.’”
Looking past the fads and what dubstep and EDM is and isn’t, people sometimes forget there are normal people behind the music doing what they dig. It’s refreshing to hear first-hand what the person on the other side of the looking glass (or DJ booth) thinks, especially someone under the microscope of controversy. It’s a fact: Skrillex is not for everyone, but for anyone wishing they could “make it” in the EDM industry, Sonny Moore is probably a dude worth listening to.
Look out for more IMS events on their website:
http://www.internationalmusicsummit.com/
