“Hello? Hello? Can you hear me now?!” I am at breaking point. Skype can be a temperamental device. With the wind blowing outside it is clear that somewhere in cyberspace my voice is being lost as a confused Joel Thomas Zimmerman, better known to the masses as his alter ego Deadmau5, cries out, “Dude! You are breaking up all over the place!” Unsure of how to rectify the situation, I simply move my laptop to another part of my cramped studio and beg the question, “Is that better?” Thankfully the frustrated response, “Yeah, I can hear you” comes bellowing back. This is not a good start, especially given Zimmerman’s reportedly frosty manner.
Luckily he appears to relax once it becomes clear that the internet issue was out of my hands and in those of the internet Gods. Deciding that perhaps questioning Zimmerman about some of his more out-there statements, including his tirade against DJs in the Irish Daily Star, where he declared “It puts me to sleep, to be quite honest; I don’t see the technical merit in playing two songs at the same speed together and it bores me to fucking tears” would be unwise, I quickly think of a new opening line. Instead I find myself putting my foot in it unexpectedly. Zimmerman has made it clear in the past that he is no fan of travelling, so with his impending visit to Australia for Creamfields fast approaching, I broach the subject of how he fuses something he hates with something he loves. Rather disappointed at my line of questioning, he reveals “I don’t like travelling. I don’t like not playing gigs.” A curt response should have been an indication that the subject should be left where he wished, but instead I probed, wondering whether the performance outweighs the travel. It proves too much for Zimmerman and he takes a deep breath and decides how to respond. “For sure. Hell, getting out of the airport outweighs it. Being in a different country outweighs it. As long as I am there, I am good. I just hate the process of travelling. The screening, the security, the sitting in airports for days. I hate it.”
With his disdain broken by a light laugh, it is clear that Zimmerman is not so much frustrated by my presence but rather the subject matter. A man who speaks his mind, it is clear that sometimes a small comment made to one journalist has been amplified through a chain of interviews in the aftermath. Flicking back to my notes, I see I have circled something he once mentioned about his passion being the music and not the elements around it, so I decide a natural progression would be to talk about the buzz of a live show. Is there a way in which it can be described to a non-performer? “Oh Jesus, that’s a big one!” Zimmerman’s tone changes completely. He is happy to be on subject, a no-nonsense guy; he is craving not personal attention, simply professional. His music has brought him notoriety but he would rather let the music do the talking and, to a degree, be left out of the equation. “It has all evolved so quickly and so fast, I’m probably not kidding when I say I have never sat back and appreciated it. I got some good advice from Adam Freeland, he told me ‘Like dude, you’ve got to stop and look what you are doinh.’ I am not really taking it in like I should be. That is something I will learn to do over the years. You know what? I am just so work minded that I am not really focusing on that. I am probably going to die of some stress related thing before I finish.” Finally on form, Zimmerman’s whole demeanor alters. In the blink of an eye he has gone from guarded to open. He has, in essence, no issue with playing the music game but he would prefer to do it on his own terms. “Just seeing the front row. Just seeing people coming to listen to your music and to hear and appreciate electronic music.”
For Zimmerman, the opportunity to be able to play live means so much to him that it easily outweighs the need to travel, thus rendering the earlier line of questioning, in his mind, redundant. Having been passionate about electronic music from a young age, he sees his opportunities as the rewards of someone else’s labors. “Electronic music is such a cool thing. I have really grown up with it, from the point when it was in its infancy. You know, there really weren’t big electronic festivals or even nightclubs. It is really kind of rewarding having been able to see this whole thing grow. To see how we got from, well, someone else got from, playing in warehouses in Chicago, Detroit and the UK. So really underground things to the point where it was almost shut down, to the point where it has emerged as a big thing.”
Though Zimmerman may be proud of the way in which electronic music defied the odds to become somewhat more mainstream, he is insistent that his own musical output relies on a lot more than the founders of the musical movement in to which others have so safely boxed him. From an early age he knew what made him tick, which can only loosely be bracketed as “Music in general. I wouldn’t pin it right to electronic music. I knew that whatever it was I was going to be doing, it was going to be music and technology related.”
Though the all encompassing world of music inspired his career path, his love of technology would prove the defining characteristic. Though technology is loosely connected to the majority of genres today, it is best tied in with the electronic sound. As a technology enthusiast, Zimmerman found that the merging of his two prime interests was too hard to resist. Without any trace of the earlier coldness, an excited Zimmerman almost screams with glee, “That is exactly it. I have a pretty hard time explaining it to people, but you pretty much nailed it there!” With that in mind, it becomes easier to understand why he battles so hard against genre classification. He may use the tools required from electronic music, but his inspiration and diverse sound encompass many different sonic classifications. Though many seem him as simply “an electronic dance act,” he insists that the labeling issue is even worse than that, “Even being pinpointed as an electronic composer, you have got all these subcategories that all these guys I can think of, all these big names in electronic music will stick to their little thing. Do you know what I mean? I don’t like that.” Admitting that during his formative years, he “was listening to Steely Dan, Radiohead and Metallica,” it is clear that he intends his own output to encompass all of the above and more. There is one exception to the rule, however, he laughs, “Everything but Bluegrass! Have you ever fucking listened to Bluegrass? Google that shit and tell me if your ears warm up to that shit. It is probably the most annoying music in the world.”
Deadmau5 [CAN] plays Creamfields with Martin Solveig [FRA], Skrillex [USA], Derrick May [USA] and more on Monday April 25 at the Melbourne Showgrounds.
