18th
Deadmau5 Leftovers
Talk about paranoid…
I interviewed Deadmau5, Toronto’s Joel Zimmerman, for the upcoming April issue of Nightlife Magazine (he’s booked to play a circuit party in Montreal that goes down on the Easter weekend). As talented as he is, the Grammy-nominated producer has some deeply conflicting views on what it is to be a DJ, as well as a hearty disregard for club culture. Usually I just list a few unused quotes, but in this case I left it as is for the sake of context:
So is this going to be a live performance with a laptop and effects?
Deadmau5: Yup.
You use something called ‘Lemur’ – is that some software I don’t know about?
Deadmau5: It’s the name of a product – a touch-screen control surface.
Like midi triggers and stuff?
Deadmau5: Yeah. It’s actually made by a company in Montreal – a company called JazzMutant.
What does it allow you to do?
Deadmau5: Well what it does for me is that it’s a very modular system; all it is really is a flat touch-screen surface where you can draw on your own control schemes and customize every controller or have it laid out however you want because it’s a video screen. You can draw your own buttons and knobs and switches and have them do only what you want as opposed to buying a fixed hardware midi controller where you’re limited to a set of [controls] that have hard-wired assignments in them. With the lemur I can build it the way I want it.
Is this something they developed for you?
Deadmau5: No, it’s actually pretty old technology. When it came out very few people were using it and were used more for lighting at big concerts. People eventually became keen on the idea of integrating it with live music.
Before I get too ahead of myself, what are the origins of the mouse head?
Deadmau5: I used it as a test model that I created in 3D Studio when I was doing 3D animation. He was the all-around guy I would use to test environment variables such as lighting, refractions and that kind of stuff. He was my basic go-to model that I would put in my scene to test things out. It’s been a staple in my life for all things, and when the music thing started to take off, I was like, “hmm…throw him in.”
Is it one of these things where the mouse head represents a different persona?
Deadmau5: You mean like a getting all alter-ego? Nah, not really.
So is your background in graphic design?
Deadmau5: All things multimedia. I’ve always done music – when I wasn’t releasing my own music I was writing music for stock music companies. For instance, a reputable motor company can’t just take any old song and use it in their campaign without permission or obtaining rights. So they’d go to a stock music company. It’s a very lucrative business, especially when Flash came out and everyone was making these gaudy, hideous websites with music blaring all over it. So I was working very closely with a lot of the top companies for stock music and sound effects. I dabbled a bit in web design, programming, audio programming like digital signal paths – all that stuff. If it involved me sittin’ around on a computer, I was into it.
On your MySpace page, you talk about having not come from a DJ or club background…
Deadmau5: …not at all.
I know this may sound like a re-hash of what some other journalists have said to you, but…
Deadmau5: Have you spoken to Alex?
Alex who?
Deadmau5: Are we recording this?
Yeah, I’m recording.
Deadmau5: OK, ‘cause this is a very touchy subject and I’ll hang up the phone if it gets out of hand. This is old news, and I’m not interested in…
It’s not what you think. I was going to ask about a recent blog entry you wrote on the trad DJ format, and how it’s mostly smoke and mirrors.
Deadmau5: It’s not the format – it’s the ideology behind the format. I can play two pieces of vinyl – each have their own unique acoustic properties, as opposed to a digital recording – at the same speed and move the fader from one to the other with the greatest of ease. That same idea has been taken and put into CD format, and now I can play two Ableton tracks side-by-side. It’s that idea that just doesn’t turn me on. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it turns anyone on. It’s just a lot of smoke and mirrors; not too many people understand what you’re doing. It’s not my goal in life to advocate making things complicated, but I’m not an illusionist up there working some magic that nobody else is doing. Because at the end of the day, be it vinyl or CDs or whatever, it’s how you’re putting it together and what you’re doing in between two songs. If I’ve noticed anything, the average dance-techno-trance record is about six minutes long, so if it only takes you a minute to transform between these two tracks then what’s going on in that five minutes? And more often than not, I’ve seen nothing.
I understand where you’re coming from with respect to the divide between audience and DJ, and how the concept is less complicated than it appears.
Deadmau5: Exactly. The idea now for me is not to be a DJ or one of these old classic heads who just play records and all that stuff. Now it’s all about the production value and putting on a show. I for the life of me would not want to pay money to listen to music in a club. Even if this guy is doing all the most technical stuff in the world, I wanna go see a show. I can listen to music way more comfortably at home; the drinks would be a lot cheaper and it would sound a lot better, you know? That’s just me; a lot of people like the atmosphere and the other people that are there. Me, I’m a bit socially retracted from just about anything and everyone so I choose not to do that. But if I were to go to a show, I’d wanna see some really crazy stuff. I wanna see some theatrics! I would gladly go to a Gwar show; I hate their music, but the amount these guys put into their production is hilarious and it’s a spectacle. And that’s what a show is all about.
Why do people react to you the way they do? I only bring this up because I just listened to Ghosts and Tapes and you totally riff on that shit at the end of the track.
Deadmau5: You know what it is? It’s the Internet. And this is the god’s honest truth – I wouldn’t make this up because it almost sounds so weird, but I never once have ever played a show, and I’ve played hundreds, where someone came up to me and brought this up and said ‘you’re a prick’ or ‘this sucks’ or ‘I had the worst time.’ That whole thing was just me and Flipside having a laugh at some of this stuff. The brunt of the negativity has come to me from online, and that’s just the rule of thumb – it’s anonymity plus an audience is a perfect recipe for total…fucktardness. You know what I mean?
Which is what you’re making fun of at the end of Ghosts and Tapes…
Deadmau5: I am a very opinionated person, which is not to say that my opinion supersedes anyone’s. I have that quirky oddness about me where I’ll just say it and not really about the effects. Sometimes I’m applauded for it, sometimes I’m hated for it. At the end of the day it’s just a load of bullshit because when I’m finished with that I’m back in the studio, doing what I like to do. It just dissolves it, and then I’m awake at night going, “well that whole thing was pointless.” So whatever.
