Skrillex and M83 contributing new music to ‘Spring Breakers’ and ‘Oblivion’

Two prominent dance-electronica musicians — Skrillex and M83 — have been tapped to contribute new music to two very different films.

The former, Grammy Award-winning artist will be dropping the bass all over “Spring Breakers,” the James Franco-starring film from the director of “Kids,” Harmony Korine. In an interview with Pitchfork, “Spring Breakers” music supervisor Randall Poster revealed that he and Korine rang up Skrillex after checking out some good, old-fashioned YouTube clips.

“I had heard of Skrillex, but I wasn’t watching it that closely. And Harmony, who I’ve worked with forever, sent me a link to some Skrillex YouTubes, and I saw one had 54 million hits — I thought he had somehow figured out a way to manipulate the numbers. And then it dawns on you: There are kids that are never going to buy a record,” Poster said in the biggest “duh” ever. “They’re just going to play songs on YouTube.”

Poster recently helmed the music for Wes Anderson’s “Moorise Kingdom” as well.

“Spring Breakers,” due in 2013, co-stars Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Harmony’s wife Rachel Korine as the inexplicably hot quartet in the film, as “four college girls who land in jail after robbing a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation find themselves bailed out by a drug and arms dealer who wants them to do some dirty work.” The flick is in post-production, and we assume Skrillex won’t just be hitting “play” on some of his B-sides.

Meanwhile, the man behind my No. 1 favorite song from 2011, M83, will be scoring the entirety of “Oblivion,” the next sci-fi adventure from Joseph Kosinski. The “Tron: Legacy” director told the Playlist he’d been thinking of working with the Anthony Gonzalez-fronted act since even before that reboot.

“I was listening to his music back in 2005 when I first wrote [‘Oblivion’], so he was part of this from the very beginning in my mind, kind of creatively. And about two years ago, when I started putting together a shortlist of people I’d love to talk to for this project, I sat down with him and we talked about it,” he said. “The story has a small cast of characters, it was designed as kind of a character-driven story, but at the same time it takes place in a vast world. So I need a score that is both emotional, but at the same time can feel big and have a lot of space in it. And his music has that.”

“Oblivion’s” cast of characters includes Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Melissa Leo. Its synopsis:

Jack Harper (Cruise) is one of the last few drone repairmen stationed on Earth. Part of a massive operation to extract vital resources after decades of war with a terrifying threat known as the Scavs, Jack”s mission is nearly complete. Living and patrolling the breathtaking skies from thousands of feet above, his soaring existence is brought crashing down when he rescues a beautiful stranger from a downed spacecraft. Her arrival triggers a chain of events that forces him to question everything he knows and puts the fate of humanity in his hands.

It’s due into theaters on April 26, 2013.

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