How Excision Became the Biggest Name in Dubstep

the American dubstep scene didn't randomly pop up one day there's a deep history behind its Origins and key players who have been around since day one building it up from nothing into the Giant commercial business it is today one of those key players is excision he has made enormous contributions to the American dubstep scene over the last two decades both musically and business-wise he's actually been around so long that he was one of Skrillex's main Inspirations when he began making electronic music in this video we'll be dissecting the career of excision and the influence he has had on the modern dubstep scene my name is Jeff Jeff AEL was born in 1986 in Colona British Columbia which is a small picturesque Canadian city that's about 170 mies Northeast of Vancouver at just 2 years old he was in a car wreck that gave him ttis which seems to be a ride of Passage for dubstep producers so it was almost as if he was born to do this all jokes aside this does play a crucial role in the story of excisions come up but we'll get into that later his ttis is why he's so adamant about everyone wearing earplugs at his shows even though in his Reddit AMA he said that tontis is quote not that bad anyways growing up in Canada he was naturally a hockey fan exision is like the biggest hockey fan he also enjoyed playing video games with his favorite game being Mega Man X for the Super Nintendo [Music] he has never specified if this game had any influence on the excision branding but it does make me wonder Mega Man X has very robotic themes throughout which is something we often see in excisions branding and maybe the X and Mega Man X gave him an affinity for the letter that now represents his project but that's all just speculation as a kid he had dreams of growing up to become a paleontologist so that he could excavate dinosaurs bones obviously he traded in that dream to be a DubStep producer but he still shares his love for dinosaurs through excision and lost lands which we'll get to you later in the video aside from playing Super Nintendo and dreaming of paleontology he also took up an interest in music at a young age I grew up listening mostly to metal and Hip-Hop which was kind of a strange combination metal always had a special place for me just hearing like the heavy riffs of the guitars mainly and Hip-Hop I was always down with like the tempo and the flow of the Beats once he was a little bit older he started to get a taste for electronic music when he discovered the prodigies the fat of the land album which came out when he was 11 years old in an interview he once said that he loved the album but he couldn't find anything else even close to it until 2005 when he was in college at the time he was studying business at the University of British Columbia which was when he discovered Vex and their album called degenerate which would change his life forever I came across vexed which was categorized as drone base on this one website and they were a really heavy almost industrial sound that people called dubstep I guess but it wasn't really dubstep at that point it was just what they wanted to after discovering Vex he immediately started producing and dejing and he decided to drop out of college soon after getting a job as a dishwasher to support himself in the meantime he said that his parents weren't very happy with his decision but they regained some faith in him when they saw him putting in 12 hours of work every day to improve his skills in a quote from an interview he said I didn't know a single other DJ for over a year and didn't meet any other producers until I was touring in 2007 it was 2005 when I started and although the internet had a few places you could read up on various techniques it definitely wasn't like today where there's a YouTube tutorial for everything learning how to produce the sounds of your imagination is a long uous process that I wouldn't recommend to anyone who isn't willing to sacrifice a big chunk of their life and you know what else youed to be a long and arduous process learning how to make incredible visuals but luckily Banger show is today's sponsor and they're here to help Banger show makes creating professional grade visuals fun and easy you can get started by picking an audio reactive background and start adding whatever 3D elements you want want a dancing monkey have at it or how about a cat and a banana suit you can do that too and you can always keep things simple and tasteful like a 3D animation of your logo if that's what you prefer next you can mess with various elements like Hue and saturation various glitch effects and more you can even adjust camera animations like point of view and how fast the view of the scene moves around Banger show also gives you ready-made templates if you need a little inspiration for your next video Banger show is a young company but they've quickly gained popularity among Rising producers like effen sown Walkin and burnout who all use Banger show as a way to promote their music on social media Banger show offers two different pricing tiers to meet your needs and if you use my affiliate Link in the description I receive a cut from every sale which will help the channel tremendously the more money I make from the channel the more time I can dedicate to it which means more frequent uploads and better content so if you're a producer looking to spice up the visual representation of your brand Banger show is the perfect solution [Music] now remember that car wreck that I mentioned at the beginning of the video the one that gave him tontis it just 2 years old well when he became an adult he received a small settlement from that accident all those years back that money allowed him to buy a good computer and studio monitors and it was enough for him to quit his job and cover his living expenses while he fully focused on music once he was working on music fulltime he was able to progress quickly and in 2006 he released his first mix called dubstep [Music] summer the following year in 2007 he released his second mix called rotten dubstep which served as his inspiration for his first label rotten recordings which he launched at the end of 2007 with his label co-founder downlink as a quick side note I'm not going to dive too deep into rotten recordings because I could make an entire video out of that but I do want to emphasize the impact that rotten has had in shaping the modern Bass music scene many renowned artists have released on Rotten over the years such as liquid stranger Seven Lions wave Dash Ray vulpi space laes subtronics and so many more like a lot more after starting the label he released his first original track called No Escape and by this point he already had enough notoriety to start touring which is pretty crazy to think think about seeing that he had just begun learning how to produce 2 years prior for the following 2 years he continued to tour and release singles on Rotten slowly building the excision project from the ground up keep in mind that dubstep hadn't blown up in the US at that point so everything that he was doing was considered very underground however one factor that helped him tremendously early on was getting booked to play at Shambala in 2008 Shambala is a popular Canadian Festival that many would consider the best Festival in the world and excision has become become a mainstate artist at the festival as he has played nearly every year since that 2008 set he played the festival 10 years straight from 2018 to 2017 and he also played in 2019 2022 2023 and will play this year as well he utilized his Shambala opportunities to the fullest by posting his Shambala sets on Soundcloud every year from 2008 until 2016 when he got too busy with lost lands and his other Ventures but the mixes were fan favorite okay so now that we've got that out of the way let's take things back to the late 2000s somewhere around that 2007 to 2008 time period a young Sunny Moore discovered excision and was inspired to start making dubstep so he launched a side project called twips while his main project at the time was just called Sunny twips was the precursor to Skrillex which is what he changed his name to when he released the scary monsters in nice Sprite EP and the rest is history Skrillex is often considered to be the main dub step Pioneer within the United States and while he is the one who really brought it into the mainstream excision was one of the main artists doing the Dirty Work necessary to help facilitate Skrillex's meteoric rise I do want to note that excision wasn't Skrillex's only influence in regards to dubstep but he has publicly said that excision was one of his main influences and I don't think that excision gets enough credit for the influence of his work in those early years by 2009 excision released his first EP on Rotten called boom followed by the aftermath EP and hypothermic EP as well as a bunch of singles throughout the rest of the year his reach was starting to grow both internationally and within North America though he still had a long way to go around this time electronic music was starting to gain more traction in the states with artists like pendulum dead mouse and Nero leading the charge pop music was beginning to adopt the more dance oriented style as well which helped warm up listeners to the idea of full-blown dance music in 2009 radio Airwaves were dominated by four on the floor beats with tracks like Laro bulletproof Boom Boom Pow by the blackeyed peas flow rers right round and just about every single one of Lady Gaga's hit tracks the musical landscape was rapidly turning away from the rock influence style that was so popular in the 2000s and electronic music was being primed for its big break though some more dominoes did need to fall the following year in 2010 excisions reach had grown and he was getting booked more frequently for major events such as EDC Las Vegas which he played for the first time that year however his popularity shot up in 2011 when he released his debut album called xrated on mouse trap dead Mouse's record label the choice for excision to release on mous trap may seem odd however it's not as crazy as it might seem Skrillex had released his scary monsters A nice bright CP on mous trap just one year prior which as we all know was a Smash Hit And it served as many people's introduction to dubstep although the EP actually has more electro house tracks than dubstep tracks but that's a conversation for another day to the general public almost any electronic track was called dubstep back then so let's just roll with that releasing on mous trp exposed exision to an entirely new listener base and he also went on Torah support for dead mouse on his meowington hacks tour which helped him gain new fans and accelerate his growth now remember how I said that he was a huge fan of Mega Man X as a kid well one of the tracks on the album album is called 8bit superhero and it samples music from the game specifically the soundtrack that plays during the level where you have to fight storm Eagle one of the bosses in the [Music] game that same year he released the existence EP which contained existence VIP a collab with down link which became massively popular power of the voice Cannon one of my friends showed me this song at school which was my introduction to excision and it seemed like pretty much everyone at my school knew that song most people were just learning about dubstep at the time and didn't really know many dubstep artists outside of Skrillex and Flux Pavilion so exision really burst onto the scene with that track at least that's how it appeared to me another interesting thing that happened in 2011 was that he got to open for corn at the Hollywood Palladium after appearing on their path of totality album I couldn't find footage of the show but there are DVD copies of the Hollywood Palladium path of totality show for sale online which has excisions performance on it just in case any of you want to buy that cor the path of totality tool live at the Hollywood padium featuring revolutionary live performances with Skrillex 12 Planet Dan down link excision Flinch and Kil the noise though I'm not totally sure how much of an impact that had on his career as a whole but I would imagine he converted some fans of that show since dubstep and metal share a fair amount of similarities all in all with the release of his debut album the tour with dead mouse and everything else I just mentioned I think it's fair to say that 2011 was his definitive breakout year though obviously much more growth was yet to come it's already gone so far beyond my original expectations of just trying to get by and pay rent things have just really taken off especially in the last year where dubstep in North America has grown to be almost mainstream but still underground enough that it can be called cool in 2012 he embarked on the X Tour unveiling the X Vision stage which was the first rendition of his Ever Changing unique stage designs that was an interesting year for excision because he started what is arguably one of the most unique electronic acts of all time destroyed the name was inspired from a 1994 comic book and the idea was to create a futuristic robot band that played Electronic Music Live excision teamed up with pendulum's drummer KJ Saka as well as downlink to form the trio we were just kind of bored of always playing DJ sets so we wanted to try something different the first track they released is called destroyed one raise your fist which was a collaboration with space laces who was a common collaborator with destroyed and he has also played a big part in excisions career but we'll dive deeper into that later in the video the following year in 2013 destroyed released their debut album before playing their first ever show in San Francisco Isco followed by shows in New York Buffalo Tempe and Chicago as well as various Festival appearances they continued on into 2014 full steam ahead making their EDC Las Vegas debut as well as playing massive festivals like Spring Awakening Global Dance and Electric Zoo that was their most active year as they played a total of 24 shows and they have only ever played two shows since then one in 2016 at Ultra and their final show in 2017 which we'll talk about in a bit during destro's Glory Days in 2013 and 2014 excision was busy taking his stage design and performances to a new level in 2013 he unveiled his new stage setup called the Executioner that paired 3D mapped animation and lighting that exision was controlling himself while simultaneously DJing the setup also featured a 100,000 watt PK sound system that was so powerful that it literally shattered light bulbs and alcohol bottles on a few different occasions here's a quote from from excision about the sound system our 100,000 watt PK system is really dialed in for dubstep with 40 subwoofers putting out pure base it can do serious damage to venues especially the smaller ones the base in small venues bounces off the back wall and double the base in some places on many occasions on a Monday or Tuesday night we would explode thousands of dollars of alcohol bottles venues also don't like it when huge chunks of drywall fall from their ceiling at every drop or when all their light bulbs explode excision toured with the Executioner stage from 2013 to 2014 and he had a bit of a bad experience on tour during an off day in South Carolina in 2014 which he talked about in his Reddit AMA saying a few weeks ago we had a day off we were in the middle of nowhere at a South Carolina hotel a few of us decided to hit the pool slh hot tub while in there a 70-year-old man opens up the door to the pool room and lies down on the floor he pulls out his DSLR camera and just starts taking pictures we tell him to off and he says okay then just keeps taking pictures he literally walks up within 2 in of our faces to get a closeup of this awesome zit I had that day after about 15 minutes of ripping on him and him trying to get us to attack him while he takes p/ films us we leave and he follows us all the way to the bus clearly a class a troll trying to get us to hit him so he can sue us we later found out he had a window looking out to where our bus was parked and saw us walk in thinking we were Rich rock stars coming out of that tour bus it was my first taste of what the life of people who are actually famous must feel like [ __ ] that [ __ ] there's a reason why my face is hidden in almost all of my press photos he didn't release much music in 2013 and 2014 probably due to his brutal schedule between all of the excision and destroyed shows plus he was probably busy finalizing his next album that would release the following year however in 2014 he discovered Dion Tamer who was only 14 at the time and he would go on to be excisions Protege Dion remixed an AFK track and AFK sent it to excision who immediately reached out to Dion so he sent it to excision and then exision came back to me like yo you're dope we got to start doing stuff yeah so that's the whole crazy link it's all it's all CU of Jimmy AFK shout out to Jimmy cuz he's one of the best guys out there for sure over the next couple of years excision helped Dion hone his skills and he even taught him how to DJ before Dion really broke into the scene in 2016 Dion even lived with excision for a bit and Canada when he was making the transition to being a full-time touring artist I went to Canada for a bit um living at excision spot and then how did he get closer and closer to exision over time cuz he's like your best friend Mentor now yeah it's crazy um we did one June and after that he flew he actually had a connection in Amsterdam so I got breakfast with him or dinner for me breakfast for him I remember that uh at the airport that was the first time time I met him and we were just talking and my dad was there too to picked me up and he was like we should get Dion out to Canada colog where he lives and a couple months later we did my parents came with me flew out to Canada to exision house and I stayed there for a little bit that was really cool we made a lot of tunes that week and yeah just slowly started growing from there I guess started visiting more and started playing shows with him kind of Grew From that in 2015 exision made his monster cat debut when he released bring the madness with pegboard nerds and he also released Robo Kitty with downlink on down Link's record label called Uplink audio but the highlight of the year was when he released his second album code name X which featured his first two collaborations with Dion Timmer who was only 15 years old at the time following the album release he went on tour featuring a new stage called the Paradox the Paradox featured a 100 50,000 WT PK sound system which was 50% more power than the light bulb shattering executioner setup and it also featured a drastically improved visual experience it was also customizable allowing 16 different configurations so that it could be modified to fit each venue perfectly whereas the Executioner stage was the same every time the stage took multiple years of planning with excision working with a nashville-based mechanical engineering firm and a structure and engineering team from Maryland to pull it off un fortunately all of the rigorous touring from the past few years had left exision with lower back pain so he decided to cut his touring Pace in half and he also started to hit the gym 5 days a week to strengthen his back speaking about this he said it's a bit sad to realize I'm only human and not a superpowered robot dinosaur from outer space but I'm proud to now be in the best shape of my life and tore the world rattling bones and melting faces for many years to come nobody want to be a bodybuild so nobody will have this heavy wait I do yeah in 2016 he released his third album virus which featured a whopping five collaborations with Dion Timmer as well as his biggest track with space laces throwing and elbows [Music] Els he continued on through the rest of the year touring with the Paradox stage and playing Major festivals as usual however behind the scenes he had been gearing up for his biggest project ever in 2017 he announced that he would be launching his own Bass music festival that year called Lost lands featuring an absurd 500,000 watt sound system excision had a lot of special things planned for the first year of the festival the first of which being his debut detox set his detox sets feature more downtempo and experimental Bass music and they serve as a creative outlet for excision to explore outside of his usual heavy-hitting dub step one surprise artist on the lineup was destroyed who would be performing their last show ever to be clear they never said outright that it was their final show but with everything excision has going on these days I think it's unlikely we'll ever see a return but I may eat my words one day unfortunately destroyed performance was cut short due to the stage catching on fire mid performance please everyone back up from the stage please everyone take two steps back from the stage please with the success of lost lands exision decided that it was time to launch his second Festival Bas Canyon a 3-day festival at the famous Gorge Amphitheater in Washington it took place just 3 weeks before the second year of lost glands and has remained a favorite among Bass music lovers ever since exision is no stranger to throwing his own shows as he was already throwing his famous Thunderdome shows at the Tacoma Dome before he got into throwing festivals he was even a promoter before the excision project took off back in the mid 2000s so he's actually quite experienced when it comes to the business side of events throwing shows kind of shows you there actually is money to be made in DJing and producing because you're throwing the show you put all this effort into promoting these artists you get x amount of people up to the show you have all these costs and you pay and at the end of the night you might walk away with a few hundred bucks but the DJ you just booked is walking away away with 1,000 bucks and he came and partied and had fun and made way more money than you did working your butt off so why can't I be that guy you know he also released his fourth album in 2018 called Apex which featured some big-time collabs with artists like Sullivan King elenium and of course the regulars Bas laces and Dion Timmer the track with elenium called gold which is one of the biggest tracks on the album was almost never released excision spoke about this in an interview saying this project was a monster to make happen there are so many things the world doesn't see behind the scenes lots of different people involved and all the industry stuff that can sometimes hold things back getting the vocal licensing contract signed for this one almost led to this track Never seeing the light of day but luckily we were able to figure everything out in 2019 excision released two EPS one with Dion timer and another with woolly who had sort of become his next Protege after Dion he also released a single with Woolly and Seven Lions on Seven Lions record label called ofilio records at his Thunderdome show in early 2020 he debuted yet another stage design this time being called The Evolution which was the followup to the Paradox design for lost lands that year he hosted a poll where fans could vote for the artists that they wanted to see at the festival in 2020 but unfortunately lost lands never happened in 20120 due to co but in its place exision hosted an online streaming festival called couchlands the event was hosted multiple times throughout the year with each rendition being called an episode before excisions set for couchlands episode 3 he announced that he was launching a new record label called subsidia Welcome to [Applause] subsidia excision said that subsidia is more than just a record label visually and thematically it's a futuristic Haven City for those who love base while the rest of society is sheltered in a simulated world that delivers all of their wants and needs subsidi have chosen to be free and are empowered to create their own experiences in the real world subsidia released its first compilation album soon after featuring a whopping 62 tracks from upand comers like night punk and viperactive as well as some long-established artists including excision himself the label is extremely active already having released hundreds of tracks to date and their reach continues to grow by the summer of 2021 exision was back to playing shows and he released a few more singles that year including collaborations with subtronics Deon Timmer Kai watchi and Sullivan King when 2022 rolled around excision was ready to debut a new flagship event called the excision Coliseum a two-day event at the Hampton Coliseum though he didn't stop there as he also rolled out his third Festival Paradise blue it's a 3-day Festival that takes place in an intimate setting at a resort in Cancun with stages on the beach as well as by the pool aside from all of the new events in 2022 he also released his Fifth and most recent album called Onyx all in all 2022 was a great year for excision though he did get a little bit of heat on the internet when getter responded to one of excisions tweets saying damn you still ripping off space laes man getter who is good friends with space laes went on to claim that a lot of space laes collabs with excision are entirely produced by space laes excision responded by saying every track that I've made with space laes lists him as a full collab artist not a feature we've worked together for years and he's been to my place and worked with me in my studio many times and I've been to his home in Louisville to work with him the destroyed album is entirely a collab album except for two solo songs one by me and one by down link space laces was a collaborator on five of the 10 tracks it's pretty obvious he was not on the other five tracks as they sound nothing like him space laces is an absolute Legend who is amazingly talented at creating Unique Sounds if you listen to the getter track with him choas it sounds like space laes space laes Sounds will dominate any collab he makes because they are dope AF Titans the song in question is a collab between Woolly and I the title track for our EP Titans entirely made in my studio our inspiration for this track was mirror my collab with Dion from 2016 both Titans and mirror are 128 BPM house tracks that go halftime to put this all to bed space SP laes has never ghost produced for me he's been given full credit as a collaborator in every track he's worked on we even have more collabs on the way that I played at Bas Canyon and we are stoked to share with you all soon space laes chimed in on the matter saying for the record I don't do any ghost producing and I don't have any interest in ruining anyone's career all the songs I've worked on with excision I'm a credited artist that being said I notice a lot of people trying to replicate songs of mine however much of that is coincidence or confirmation bias I'll never know but I can't get mad for people taking inspiration on a good day it's flattering on a bad day it just feels like a broken record in an industry where I often feel disregarded or taken advantage of at the end of the day I just want the recognition for the work that I've done anything between me and Jeff I'd rather handle personally and not in public I appreciate the friends who have my back and thank you for always sticking up for me I appreciate it more than you could know all I have to personally say on the matter is that I do think space laces is brutally underrated and I would even go as far as saying that he's the best dubstep producer in the world and has been for many many years exision even said the same thing in his Reddit AMA 10 years ago so if you're not on the space laes train you should get on it because his music is absolutely nuts delicious but that's enough space LA's fanboying for today so let's get back to excision in 2023 excision released a slew of new music including nine singles as well as the Titan zp with woolly he also o pulled off yet another round of all of his Flagship events and festivals with lost lands having its biggest year yet but the biggest part of his year came when he got engaged to his longtime girlfriend Emma so far in 2024 he has released three singles and in February he pulled off another successful two-day run of the Thunderdome where he even played alongside Mello death the duo of sudden death and marshmallow he also debuted some wild new visuals including an angry Shrek which I'm sure you've all seen by now the new visuals were so crazy that they caught the attention of Kanye West who posted a screenshot of excisions Instagram on his own Instagram with the caption thank you for letting me know about these companies in my comment section he did post screenshots of some other visual companies and artists including anima but the world of excision and Kanye West colliding was definitely not something that I had on my 2024 bingo card a few months later in April excision had a big announcement posting that he and his fiance are having a baby in October of this year and the baby is rumored to go backtack with excision and DJ diesel at lost lands next year but nothing has been confirmed yet aside from that he just pulled off his third successful year of paradise blue and he has a bunch of tour dates scheduled for the rest of the year all leading up to his two biggest events of the Year base Canyon and lost lands excision has been a staple of the dubstep Community ever since it blew up in the US in 2010 and he was one of the few artists repping it when dubstep was totally underground he's never really been the most hyped artist instead he has taken more of a slow and steady road and it has served him well I do think that his historical contributions to the American dubstep scene are often overlooked or perhaps they're just overshadowed by his enormous influence in this current ERA both as an artist and a businessman it does seem that he has been growing into that business role more and more in recent years and it makes me curious as to how his influence will grow as we move forward I'm not sure what the future will hold but I can imagine that excision will have many more surprises in store for the dance music [Music] Community than you

Channel: Audio Eats

Views: 32,600

Keywords: excision documentary, excision interview, excision video essay, excision podcast, excision audio eats, excision video

Id: zUL2KLLDi54

Length: 30min 42sec (1842 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2024