Elvis Walsh talks capturing a moment and the genius of Skrillex
By Lindy Ralph
‘I do it because I'm obsessed with it. And I can't stop now because I've invested my entire life into it.’
I’m sitting on the end of musician and producer Elvis Walsh’s unmade bed. We are in the run-down house that he shares with friends Dec and Zeke in Footscray. Elvis lolls around on the other end. There are vintage music posters hung on the wall, alongside colourful hand-drawn pictures on white A4 paper. ‘Good boy,’ I say, ‘that's the quote I was looking for.’
I’m Elvis’s mother and I'm here under the guise of interviewing him about his ‘journey’ – ick, I know – from 11-year-old Skrillex wannabe to 22-year-old analogue music producer. Parents must be devious to see their adult children sometimes!
Elvis and I have been a tight team of two since before he was sucked out of me via ventouse – or vacuum extraction – in February 2000. The world he was born into was pre-iPod and people were using P2P (peer-to-peer) networks like Napster and Kazaa to exchange music files for free over their dial-up internet connections.
Elvis has always had a knack for understanding complex theories and systems. When he was nine years old, I came home to find him and his uncle with their heads in a gaming PC they were building from scratch on the kitchen table.
We were living a very ‘analogue’ life back then. Our mudbrick house in the bush was off-grid. We had solar power, tank water and a composting toilet, but within the thick, earthen walls, we had some high-tech stuff going on ...
This profile is an excerpt. To read the full article, pick up a copy of the October 2022 print version of Ellipses for free at either the RMIT Student Union in Building 8 on Swanston St or the lobby of Building 94 on Cardigan St.
fascinating article!