Skrillex: Summit

Skrillex’s wobble hits different when it’s compressed through club speakers. That sub-bass punch feels like it’s rearranging your insides. Sonny Moore figured out how to make aggression sound beautiful, or maybe the beauty is in the aggression itself. He hit his peak in the early 2010s when dubstep went from internet novelty to something visceral and urgent.

His production was meticulous, those builds hanging on the edge of collapse before dropping like a physical force. There was actual feeling underneath the technical mastery, which kept it from feeling sterile or cold. Even after the wobble became cliché and dubstep moved on, there’s something about his best tracks that hasn’t dimmed. He wasn’t trying to be cool—he just made the music he wanted, and that’s more punk than a lot of bands actually called punk.