Float Fest Artist Spotlight: Deadmau5
Written by Miriam Gonzalez on July 21, 2022
After much anticipation, DeadMau5 is set to hit the stage in Gonzales, Texas on July 23-24 at Float Fest.
Before Canadian producer Joel Zimmerman rose to fame, he had always found an interest in video games and electronics since he was a kid. The start of his musical journey began when he was a teenager after he received a keyboard on christmas and started taking piano lessons. Before he made his break into the mainstream on Pete Tong’s Radio show playlist with his track “Faxing Berlin“, he was creating synthesized electronic music called chiptunes prior to the myspace boom in 1990. As time progressed his music began to evolve with his experience and through his inspiration for IDM and trance. It wasn’t until 2002 that he found a dead mouse in his computer and told people that they started calling him the “dead mouse guy” in an internet chat room. This compelled him to change his username to Deadmau5, a name that would later become the precursor to his stage name and huge pillar to the world of electronic dance music. Fast Forward to 2005 when he released his debut album called Get Scraped that featured tracks like “8bit’,” “Try Again” and “Unspecial Effects” that were also featured on Project 56 under different names.
After dropping his second studio album Vexillology, he launched his own record label Mau5trap. A year later on January 16, 2008 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Zimmerman made his first appearance on stage with the mouse helmet that would eventually become a huge staple to the Deadmau5 name. Later that year he released his third studio album Random Album Title featuring the hit song “I Remember” with Kaskade in 2008. That same year he released another collaboration with the American Dj called “Move for Me” that hit number one in Billboard’s Dance/Mix Show Airplay Magazine. Eventually leading Deadmau5 to becoming the sixth Canadian to top that chart with three number-one tracks that include “I Remember” and “Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff”.
On August 16 2010, after releasing his four studio albums For Lack of a Better Name with hit tracks “Ghost ‘n’ Stuff” and “Strobe” he was named the house DJ for the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards and MTV PUSH artist of the week. That same year he released 4×4=12 with singles “Some Chords” which was featured on CSI, “Animal Rights” featuring Wolfgang Gartner and “Sofi Needs a Ladder” featuring SOFI and was later featured on The Hangover Part II.
After two years Deadmau5 dropped his sixth album, Album Title Goes Here on August 9, 2012 which featured artists like Chris James on “The Veldt”, Gerard Way on “Professional Griefers”, Wolfgang Gartner on “Channel 42”, and Imogen Heap on “Telemiscommunications”. That same year FUSE TV named “Professional Griefers” one of the top 40 songs in 2012. Once 2013 came around the corner the Canadian Dj released an EP called 7 and parted ways with Ultra Records and signed with Astralwerks that houses well known Dj like Swedish House Mafia, David Guetta, and The Chemical Brothers. After finding a home for his music, he announced that his seventh studio album would be released on June 17, 2014 under the name While(1<2) with four singles (“Avaritia”, “Seeya” with Colleen D’Agostino, “Infra Turbo Pigcart Racer” and “Phantoms Can’t Hang”) to be released each week for four week up until the release of the album. In 2015 after headlining Bonnaroo, appearing at Reading and Leeds fest, performing at KeyArena, and creating sound clips for Dota 2 he announced that he is splitting with Astralwerks and going independent with his record label Mau5trap.
By the end of that year Deadmau5’s screen went black and he decided to delete his twitter and facebook accounts. After some time he came to tumblr to post an apology for his absence due to him focusing on his mental health. After his time away he later announced the release of “Snowcone” the first single of his eighth studio album W;/2016Album/ that he released in 2016. The mau5 was back and he was in full force; leading him to release a compilation album of his work from 1998-2007 the following year called Stuff I Used to Do. That same spring he hit the road starting off in North America for the Lots of Shows in a Row tour which eventually led him to touring around the rest of the world and Canada with his new Cube 2.1 experience.
Finally from 2018-2022 Deadmau5 has dropped multiple more projects like 3 ep’s of his Mau5ville series featuring artist like Getter; GTA; Lights; Mr.Bil; Scene of Action; Shotty Horroh; C.O.Z; and No Mana, a soundtrack for the Netflix film Polar, a single with The Neptunes called “Pomegranate”, “Bridge by a LightWave” featuring Kieza, and “Hypnocurrency” featuring Rezz. Emerged from the depths of the underground Deadmau5’s most recent collaboration project Kx5 finally launched. The duo has been 14 years in the making and is the fourth time the two producers have worked together. On March 23,2022 they hit the stage at Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas and performed live for the first time with their hit single “Escape” featuring Hayla.
Deadmau5, like many other legends in the electronic dance music scene, has shifted the progressive house scene to what it is today, his sound is a mixture of uplifting to sad progressions comprised with his signature deep rich pluck sound and melancholic interludes.
You do not want to miss out on Deadmau5’s ineffable visual experience at Float Fest this weekend.
