They were music heroes for me. The best DJs, Live-Acts, Producers in my eyes. But driven by commerce or by whatever they suddenly changed into something worse… other style, other image. No quality at all anymore. This is about me and my Fallen Heroes.
Chapter 3 - Deadmau5
In the year 2007 there was suddenly a certain song. DJs of different House Music genres played it a lot in their sets. The track was progressive, it had a cool melody, a good groove and a pushing atmosphere. I liked it right away. I searched for the song quite a time and finally I found out, it is "Arguru" from an artist called "Deadmau5". "Dead Mouse?" Never heard before, but I knew immediately, a guy who calls himself like this and writes the name like he does is very creative.
I made some research: the name comes from an
incident where a mouse crawled into his computer and died. "Dead Mouse" was
too long for an IRC login name, so he
abbreviated it to be the “leet speak” spelling “Deadmau5”. His real name is
Joel Zimmerman, he is from
Canada and during that time 26 years old.
Aha! I wanted to have "Arguru" as my
profile song in my
myspace page - during that time a still very important social network. But Deadmau5 had the track not online. So I wrote to him… and
Joel answered very nice! He will put the track online. Oh yeah, I love Social Media!
From this moment on I
had an eye on his releases, and he produced a lot! And all the tracks were remarkable. All
main melodies are
played in a certain style.
Beautiful compositions with high recognition, but still having an
underground touch! Pure innovation! I loved releases like
"Not Exactly" or
"Jaded" - and especially
"Faxing Berlin", the best track of the year. Is he the
Mozart of our time?
Now Deadmau5 went off
like a rocket! He made for sure one of the
fastest careers in the electronic music biz. It rained down
awards for him, he was everybody's darling! But only because of his good productions? No!
First: Joel is a
master of Social Media. He knows how to speak to fans and how to use the different available free channels for
excellent self-promotion.
Second: he invents a huge
marketing gag. Suddenly he wears a
gigantic mouse head during his gigs (originally he created the shape while
learning to use a 3D program). It is said one head is worth more than 10.000$, equipped with a headphone and ventilation system. Everybody speaks about it, and everybody wants to see him
live. And yes, fans wear
Mickey Mouse ears like there is a Disney Parade going on.
What do you want more!?
Suddenly
Deadmau5 changes his new songs a bit. His famous style of playing the melodies is gone. OK,
an artist has to develop, especially when you want to stay on the top. The track is still good though, so don't worry...
But the releases are getting with the time
more and more worse, more and more towards
Electro. For those who do not know: horrible cheap aggressive tones, which you heard already at least 1000 times before, combined with
zero innovation - this is Electro. Or "stabbing in the back" music like I call it.
In the past I played
every new track from him on our internet radio.
Now: not even one. He
was the greatest producer of our time, now he is a cheap ripoff. But why? I heard from promoters who book him for a gig that he is now very arrogant. If its true, I don't know. Maybe the success was
too fast for him, maybe he wants to make even more money. Cheap Electro sounds are played in every small village club,
the target group who likes it is much bigger. He completely changed for getting
more audience -
but they are no music lovers. A huge pity - for those who know: we lost one of the
best composers of all time.
Read also:
Chapter 2 - Erick Morillo
Photo: Deadmau5
