Anyway I miss writing + my brain is getting mushy, so here's an attempt at insight into one of the artists that I love:
Deadmau5. Joel Zimmerman.
This guy:
He's my favorite DJ/EDM producer, since I learned to love EDM music circa early 2009 (also when I started drinking, getting substantially inebriated, and learning to enjoy and eventually revel in club music).
Sure his inveterate attitude of typing in internet jingoisms (meowingtons, hax) and his indifference in naming his tracks (dub5tep thingy, moar ghosts n stuff) do get somewhat tiresome but Joel is a geek, man.
deadmau5' facebook
He just happens to be a famous, rich, fucking fantastic geek who took his quirky hobby, tweaked it over several years until he got the right progressive/electroish hard sound that WAY deservingly brought him into the limelight.
He didn't start out as a fag producer but as a computer techie and I admire his despise of the whole DJ charade: it's true, all DJs do is put two tracks on different turntables, listen and arrange the beats in sync, and then move the crossfader from one to the other
Albeit for several hours; but hell, they get paid $100s to $1000s.
For laughs I do imagine a night when
if I was a DJ and the crowd was decent I would bring up iTunes, play one rerecorded 6 hour setlist, and then play DoTA.
The crowd would have NO CLUE.
They'd think I was turning this knob here for the flanger, or bass/treble, or whatever bullshit that DJs pretend to do, when in fact I'm ganking some n00b with my level 25 maxed out Dwarven Sniper, or Rikimaru.
Anyway point is: Production >>>>>>>>> DJing.
However nowadays we do get 16 year old kids like Madeon doing god knows how on these fancy multiple square loop devices.
Also some DJs apparently do do more than play tracks and crossfade, tweaking sets real-time with Ableton Live; regardless, DJs are not rock bands, there is only so much that your hands can do when spinning live.
Shit.
What was I doing when I was 16?
Jacking off, watching anime, studying for my GCSEs, and probably being pretty stupid.
I envy this kid's mad skills.
But back on subject: Deadmau5, the mau5.
I like the music, the contrarian geek, and the idea of deadmau5 so much so that a deadmau5 head is one of the foremost ideas in my tattoo waiting line:
In order to show my allegiance, and personal veneration. Perhaps. Plus it would be 'cool' in a stoopid way to have a EDM tat on my body, like this:
Also those who know me know I enjoy bad tattoos:
Having some small and stupid ink drilled into the dermis of your body is a great way to stick it to the man.
LOL.
I have downloaded most of his good albums (4x4=12, For Lack of A Better Name) as well as his older ones (the old Get Scraped (see the alarm clock song: Waking up from the American Dream), Vexillology) and have listened, enjoyed, and pondered about much of his music.
For the most part,
Deadmau5's songs can be divided into three types: black, white, and grey
• The tight electro sound: hard to learn to love but once understood is very enjoyable.
e.g. Dr Funkenstein, The Reward is Cheese (when I first heard this I hated it, it took me 2 years to learn to love it), Maths, Professional Griefers, A City in Florida, Animal Rights.
• The beautiful, slower pieces e.g. Strobe, Brazil (2nd edit), Some Kind of Blue, I Remember, You and I, Raise your Weapon.
• The random totally whack types e.g. dub5tep thingy, Aural Psynapse (a nontypical deadmau5 trance wonder-production), Subvert (I hate this song. I reckon it's more of a filler piece for Joel to transition between different songs; as a singular entity it is horrible and hurts my fu**** ears).
Anyway,
Here's a chronological list of my favorite mau5 pieces:
Ghosts n Stuff
First heard it in 2009; initially starstruck/amazed. The initial astonishment at this genre of music has dissipated since.
Pretty much brought me into researching the genre (at the time I was listening to Benassi, Fedde le Grand) I liked the name deadmau5 and thus looked up, listened, and fell in some love.
Strobe
His best song; talked about more further down.
I Remember
It's THE late night drive song.
In your moderately fast vehicle with rows of yellow effervescent street lights flashing past.
* can be coupled with You and I. That beautiful proggressive house song with the z3ta+ chords of life, reverb; Wow.
Then came 4x4 = 12 (2010):
It was a different album in comparison to For Lack of a Better Name (2009).
For the most part 4x4 is incoherent; you can kind of see that Joel is experimenting with LFOs (low frequency oscillations) for that low swoop sounds (see Cthulhu Sleeps) but it is left to the listener to imagine if deadmau5 doesn't know how to incorporate wub wubs into his songs or whether he just wants it that way.
Also despite my hardest attempts I've come to the conclusion that Sofi is annoying. (Sofi Needs a Ladder should be called Sofi Needs to Shut the F*** Up; listen to You Need a Ladder? with the Zelda intro theme and TELL me it's not miles better)
Anyway here's some more in depth insight into some deadmau5 songs:
about Strobe:
Get a good pair of headphones, an empty room, and listen.
Personally I have 3 Strobes in iTunes; the 6:00 club edit, original whopping 10:00 long mix, and the MrFijiWiji remix.
Let's start with the original:
*I mucho envy Joel's producing skills: he's kind of like a quasi-Mozart of the electronic scene;
and I quote I would chop off both my pinky toes to possess half of his talent.
Seriously, serious good house music production a la FruityLoops, Albeton, Reason, Cubase is extremely difficult. The software might be floating freely on the torrent cloud but the learning curve is way too high in comparison to the sounds being made.
The xylophone like melody ****
Those shakers with delay + reverb *******
That riff (that get progressively faster and faster until it reaches equilibrium) *****
Mini drop when the drum line comes in ***
GOOD.
Bass comes in ****
GOOD. Chills.
Bass disappears and a haunting electronic howl echoes in *****
The rising riff *****
The riff solos and rises and rises and rises *******
The secondary riff comes in ( da da da dada , dun da da da dada, da dada dada, dun da da da dada) ****
The final clang sound echoes ****
The 7 minute drop (one of the longest and most deserving drops in EDM history) ********
The follow up with the bass, drums, riff: so beautiful *****
I imagine being on some ethereal plane, Zolton, blind, and just swaying to this song.
When the drop came, I would release into a trillion dots in every direction and merge with beauty.
One day I hope to roll on E and be in a huge arena/beach (maybe Ultra), and just listen to this song.
Escape all the bullshit.
Pure music magic.
On to the most famous song of the mau5:
Ghosts n Stuff
I put up the live version of Ghosts n Stuff played in some mansion-like club in LA because the setting matches the happy-haunting vibe of the song.
The long haired deadmau5 is Steve Duda, second half of BSOD (Joel and Steve).
Also it's fun to see the undulating motion of the crowd down below; you get a sense of the epicness that is a live deadmau5 gig.
I used to dislike the version w. Rob Swire's vocals but now I believe that the vocals version is better than the instrumental mix.
Anyway; great medium harsh electro song;
Perfect +10db snare, 0db bass, -10db hi-hat ratio: ultra solid beat, essential component of any electro track ******
drop ***
good
The deep bass melody ****
The haunted mansion stabs *****
You can also see Ghosts n Stuff is a precursor to Skrillex's famous Scary Monsters and Sprites;
those seemingly random placed swiveling sounds in the verse of Ghosts inspire the same random monster-like sounds coming from Scary Monsters...
Funny that they are also the two well known songs Deadmau5 and Skrillex songs.
*Skrillex is signed to mau5trap recordings and is a sort of protégé of deadmau5.
He also brought the dubstep/electro amalgamation that all the "now grown up" teeny boppers have just found and LOVE.
By the way Skrillex was part of the emo/post hardcore scene (see From First to Last), and some of his earlier recordings with vocals under the name Sonny Moore do make me cringe.
Sorry bro, your music production skills are intense but that haircut is fagalicious.
Shave that horse tail for god's sake.
Some of Skrillex's songs are a bit too faggy.
I am referencing to the songs in his repertoire which are too too hardcore electro and will probably attract that group of young impressionable idiots who look like this:
I've never been to a Skrillex concert; I want to, but I'm afraid I'll get swamped and trampled on by a bunch of sweaty stoopid kids as shown in the aforementioned picture.
But I digress; some Skrillex songs are genuinely good see Scatta ft. Foreign Beggars and Reptile:
Also the Zedd remix of Scary Monsters is good.
Not gonna lie. The chorus is meh, the beat into the verse is the killer for me.
Anyway back to deadmau5.
I shall leave you with a white deadmau5 song: Move for Me
Ah Kaskade.
Producer from the Mid-west of the USA.
Shock! A good US DJ? It cannot be?
He's another favorite DJ of mine: Eyes, Samba Love, Steppin Out (Chill Out Mix), Peace on Earth
And a very very dirty black deadmau5 song:
Sounds like porn.
In a more-than-expected literal sense.
Cheers,
Andrew
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