Joel Zimmerman doesn't like being called a DJ. The dance music phenomenon from Toronto, better known as deadmau5, rolls his eyes at the description which he sees as a hopelessly outdated way of describing what he does. His sets are closer to live performances as he assembles tracks on the fly using cutting edge computer technology including software that he's helped to write himself. “There are no CDs involved,” he explains. “It's a technological orgy up there and I try and keep it more my music than anyone else's. If people come out to see deadmau5 I want them to hear deadmau5 music.”
Now firmly established as one of the most innovative and popular electronic live acts globally, Deadmau5 has had an outstanding year. His driving foresight is constantly pushing the technological boundaries of his stage show. In May 2010 he unveiled the visual orgy of the cube stage and his highly anticipated L.E.D 'mau5ehead'. The year climaxed with a 17,000 capacity sell out show at London's Earls Court. He is the first ever electronic artist to headline the legendary venue. Additionally the dancefloor icon's multi award winning albums have seen him achieve that rare balance, appealing to both the clubbing cognoscenti and musical masses.
Zimmerman grew up in Niagara Falls, Ontario, near Toronto. As a kid he was obsessed with computers and started making chip tunes as a teenager. “They're musical compositions made using the chips from old computers,” he explains. Soon, his chip tunes attracted the attention of the Los Angeles nu metal community which resulted in him contributing to Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee's 1999 album Methods Of Mayhem. The unlikely duo remain friends as well as collaborators; in 2009 they released two electro house singles — Chicken and Redic — under the name W.T.F.?, while they also reunited to play at Miami's Ultra Music Festival in 2010.
It was around this time that Zimmerman became involved with a low-budget dance music radio show in Niagara Falls called The Party Revolution. “Back then, cutting edge dance music in Niagara Falls meant Babylon Zoo,” he laughs. His job was “technical whizz kid”. In other words, he was the one who knew how to use a computer. “All those guys were interested in was recording two turntables onto a computer and burning off a CD so they could send it the radio station,” he explains. “I learnt about digital audio and making music on computers and new editing techniques. Every new bit of technology that was released to do with making music, I was on top of it. They were still dinosauring it out playing on turntables.”
When he tried to convince local recording studios that they needed to embrace computers at the turn of the millennium, no-one was interested. “They had an old school approach to recording music. They were really in denial about that kind of thing. It was rocket science to them. They didn't get it.” Zimmerman did. Eventually he managed to convince a small studio in Toronto to let him install new technology and he helped to record numerous local bands.
While earning his dance music stripes, Zimmerman worked as a web developer. Together with long-term collaborator Steve Duda, Zimmerman writes music making software, including one of the programmes he uses in his live show which he describes it as “like a drum sequencer and sample player on crack”. Evolving music technology's cutting edge, deadmau5 worked for FL Studios, the company behind Fruity Loops, and contributed to the development of an iPhone app called Touch Mix, which allows you to mix tracks on your mobile.
Zimmerman says that his dream at the time was to be a producer, working on other people's music. He wrote his own material as a hobby. “IDM (intelligent dance music) like Aphex Twin,” he says. “Nothing to do with the kind of thing I make now.”
His first proper release started out as a joke. It was called This Is The Hook, written together with Duda under the name B.S.O.D. (which stands for 'blue screen of death', jargon for the dreaded Windows error message). They took a house beat and added a digitised voice explaining what was happening. They considered it to be a hilarious parody of the formulaic extreme of dance music; what they hadn't counted on was it going to #1 on the Beatport chart in 2006.
B.S.O.D. crafted an entire album and remixed Hurt by Christina Aguilera, but the money ran out and Duda had to return to L.A. “We may do some more B.S.O.D. stuff in the future,” says Zimmerman. “And we're still working on software together.”
