Deadmau5 in the House
If the world’s core dance floors belonged to Kaskade, Trentemøller, and Claude VonStroke in 2006, this year, Deadmau5 was the name on every super-club DJ’s tongue. And true to these hyperreal times, Deadmau5’s was an almost-instant, web-generated fame that has taken even the man himself by surprise. “I just signed my first autograph,” says the 27-year-old, who has barely a dozen tracks to his name.
Ah, but those releases have shot around the global underground like text messages at a software convention, ending up on at least 15 dance compilations this year, not to mention their presence on the top of playlists of everyone from BBC Radio 1 influencer Pete Tong, to DJ titan John Digweed, to rocker-turned-spinner Tommy Lee, who’s a friend of the Toronto-based phenom. Lee tells us Deadmau5’s music is “beats ’n’ bass that just fucking feel good.” The Canadian’s tunes are constantly at the head of the “top downloads” charts at dance music’s biggest online retailer, Beatport.com. In fact, thanks to his songs’ popularity, Deadmau5 is so in-demand as a DJ on the super-club circuit that he’s booked every weekend through next summer. Even he admits that, before February, when Pete Tong played his “Faxing Berlin” on BBC Radio 1, few in club-land knew he existed.
Like Trentemøller, Gui Boratto, and 16 Bit Lolitas, Deadmau5 has deftly tapped a zeitgeist sound that exists between the operatic drama of trance, the Teutonic precision of techno, and the Baptist rhapsody of house music. His signature songs (“Jaded,” “Not Exactly,” “Faxing Berlin”) move majestically forward on forceful rhythms, like great clippers cutting through white-capped seas. Epic breakdowns give way to perfect arpeggio keyboard chords that are simple yet wholly effective in playing your heartstrings for ecstatic affect. Gorgeous loops are launched into the atmosphere as Deadmau5 keeps them coolly under control. It’s almost as if the producer, born Joel Zimmerman, has captured the ghost in the machine of dance music. He’s yet another example of how the nerds are inheriting the earth. “I owe a great deal of my success to being reclusive,” Deadmau5 says.
“At the dawn of the era when people started making music on PCs” Deadmau5 was in on the ground floor, working at a computer shop during his teenage years in Niagara Falls, geeking out on hardware and communicating online with music software developers, he says. “Growing up like that, I’ve had this stigma of, ‘Am I Joel the Musician or Joel the Programmer?”
At age 22, Deadmau5 finally moved out of the nest (mom was an artist, dad worked at a General Motors plant) to take a job in Toronto as a Flash software developer. Soon he found work as a consultant for a Belgian music software company, which paid the bills as he transitioned to making “random tracks” for Toronto label Play Digital. A few years ago he was investigating a horrible stench in his apartment that eventually led him to his desktop PC, inside which he found a “crispy critter.” He later framed the poor fellow and took on the name Deadmau5 because “dead mouse” comprises too many characters to use as an Internet Relay Chat handle.
This year, a friend passed along some of his music to British DJ-producer Chris Lake, who passed it along to Pete Tong, who played it for the globe. Today, when he isn’t running his Mou5trap label, DJing from city to city, or working on an album he hopes to release next year, Deadmau5 is collaborating on harder-edged “electro house” with L.A. producer, Steve Duda. About three years ago, Duda introduced him to notorious rocker Tommy Lee, a sometime DJ and e-music aficionado who now pals around out with Deadmau5 when he’s in Toronto. Lee says he’s collaborating with Deadmau5 on some music: “Yes, kids! You all just wait ’til 2008.”
“I’ve had a taste of the rock star lifestyle hanging out with Tommy Lee,” Deadmau5 says. “I could get used to it.”
Published: 12/07/2007
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