Skrillex Drops the Bass Way Too Hard in an Animated Music Video

Animator lilfuchs envisions a world where Fatman Scoop parties so hard, even Skrillex and Jauz have to "SQUAD OUT!"

by Beckett Mufson

March 15, 2016, 3:30pm

Still from "SQUAD OUT!" Images courtesy the artis

Generally, producers like Skrillex and Jauz are thought of as the mystical party beasts, blasting bass into shattered partygoers, but the roles are reversed in a psychedelic new music video for their collaboration with Fatman Scoop, "SQUAD OUT!" Embodied as a Ganesh-like elephant man, Scoop and his gang of drumming, bassing, dancing animals assault Skrillex and Jauz in an elevator and turn them to human jelly with the power of their beats.

Drawing on the immortal souls of Willy Wonka, Dr. Who, and the Looney Tunes, animator lilfuchs brings the banger to the Nth dimension and envisions a world so party that even Skrillex can't hang. "The track just brings you in that headspace already. It’s fun and never lets go," he tells The Creators Project. "I had to think of it in that way, but from a visual angle. It had to be funny and had to be repetitive like the song. It’s very much a cartoon gag that’s constantly annoying you. Essentially it’s the same joke over and over again, but the song is so good, so you never get bored with it."

Still from "SQUAD OUT!"

Lilfuchs took input from each of the characters in the song about what they wanted to look like. "My style of art can be a bit crude at times, so there was a little back and forth at the beginning making sure they were happy," he says. Previously he's created an Escher-esque basketball-themed world for Prefuse 73, explored a Moog synth's innards with Flying Lotus, and visited the afterlife with This Will Destroy You. His work often forgoes characters in favor of trippy tunnels and detailed worlds, but he still nails Skrillex, Jauz, and Fatman Scoop in this killer video. "They look cool as shit if I don’t mind saying," he says.

The climax of the video comes when the elephantine Fatman Scoop all but crushes the producing duo's heads with a pair of subwoofers. It would be a difficult shot to illustrate and animate believably from the imagination alone, so lilfuchs resorted to extreme measures, using his family as models. "I was repeatedly telling my kid and wife, 'Put your head up against the subwoofer.'" Talk about dedication.

Melt your legs to jelly with the mystical elephant man by watching the full "SQUAD OUT!" video below.