Electronic danse music (EDM) invades Hollywood scores and soundtracks
Electronic musicians have scored movies for years. Recent examples include the Chemical Brothers for "Hanna" in 2011, Daft Punk for "Tron: Legacy" in 2010 (also directed by Mr. Kosinski) and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for "The Social Network," for which they won an Academy Award. However, artists like Skrillex, Kaskade and M83 have more trendy momentum than their predecessors did during their projects. By including them, the movies get a quick infusion of youthful relevance, while the musicians court a broader mainstream audience and receive a significant salary.
Skrillex, whose real name is Sonny Moore, composed his score for "Spring Breakers" while on tour, using his laptop, much as he does for his albums. He said he watched early cuts of scenes from the movie before creating the score; his initial reaction to the film was that "it has a lot of tension, so there's a lot of that mixed with the melody," he said. He used live guitars and vocals performed by his girlfriend, the British pop singer Ellie Goulding, and he described the score -- which he declined to play because he had not finished it -- as a distilled version of his dance music, which took out all the upbeat parts, emphasizing melody, "leaving the pretty parts, leaving the sad parts."
Mr. Korine said of Skrillex and "Spring Breakers": "He is of the generation, and it is in him. The culture and that idea, the violence and the emotion and the aggression and the beauty -- it is all in him and in the music. It was pretty natural and pretty awesome to watch him tap into that with the characters and the story, the kind of culture that it represents."