Ok - I’ve been listening to a lot of Deadmaus lately and his music is incredible IMO
Take 10.8 for example. At first it might sound like it’s trying too hard, but it’s quite an incredible track
I keep finding that when I’m really impressed with a track technically it has his name on it.
I know he’s popular, but damn some of his stuff is so tasty.
I think he’s on another level
It helps that his house is essentially a studio 
But yes, very good production!
I don’t like any of his popular music but I agree this is well produced if not especially unique. Will check him out.
His music sounds like Ableton session view looks like.
I mean, all very impressive, but it just sounds like a bunch of stuff that’s been very well arranged and mixed in Ableton. All sound, no journey for me.
My opinion means dick though.
I think your opinion means a lot as the OG miserable git 
I didn’t like 10.8 when I first heard it, but it stayed in my “liked” playlist and now I really appreciate it.
Not all his stuff is glitchy. This is a popular track (Imaginary Friends), but the quality of it is still crazy good IMO:
Yeah, it’s obviously really well made, it’s just not a style of music or production that I get on with. It’s all a bit too clean for me.
Yep, and different tastes make the world go around.
I tend to lean towards melodic stuff, but also love distortion. This was actually the track yesterday where I thought, “Wow, who is this?” and it was Deadmaus again
Exactly this.
And Mr Bill, and all the other people making that style. Its all very ‘grid’ and ‘draw automation’ .
No feel at all. Its all a technical excercise.
People go nuts for it on the floor though. Because its loud, and it does what they want it to do. It goes boom boom when they want, it goes woosh when they want. I find it boring.
Its important to recognize that his current music name is “No Masters” so that might shine some light on his aesthetic philosophy
Starts out great but then it goes too far. With the miserable git here. I get tired just listening to this sound.
Impressive it certainly is, but 
Also, Mr Bill has been doing that style for years, long before he managed to pal up with deadmau5 and piggypack.
interesting and obviously sounds super clean and professional.
But I don’t feel any of the music I heard from him (which was not a lot I got to admit)
i feel this way about mr bill, the guy in the first video. but im not a real fan of modern “dubstep”
i did have an ex who put on this deadmau5 and trentemoller cd all the time in her jetta and i always loved the thuddy sound of vw car speakers/woofers and it sounded so clean and incredible in that car, even though i hated the music before that point.
it was this track mostly. the part around 5:23 kills
and then “raise your weapon” which isnt bad either
must be what rave kids experience when they take molly at some 16+ club downtown
i wonder how i would feel about him if he had a different name and entire aesthetic
this is so true. i used be so impressed by mr bill’s sound design ableton videos, but i would never want to treat music production like an excel spreadsheet. doing formulas and all of these unnecessary workarounds to get a “groove” by extracting midi notes from a synth arp sample or something, then applying that midi clip to a snare sample. it is cool, but not necessarily what i think of when i think of “art making”
A comment made years ago (when I was taking piano lessons…) by my piano teacher on Beethoven’s music: Some of it is just made out of generic building blocks stacked together, but then there are instances where individual pieces or even just single passages are stunningly beautiful.
IMO this applies to Deadmaus to some extent. I really appreciate some tracks but he does have no shortage of music that (I think) tries too hard to be neutral as to be enjoyable for me.
Edit: typo
I can’t get past my envy that he owns the actual Arp 2600 behind R2D2.
Top level production. Very effective for the target audience. Technically it’s cutting edge but cheesy and quite boring for me. I think this is what happens when you make music for your audience and with a specific function in mind. Deadmau5 is very successful though, so good luck to him. I hope he’s happy with his art.
This feels relevant:
I’m reading through David Byrne’s How Music Works at the moment and in the first chapter he argues that music is often tied to the space it’s performed in.
Classical/religious music that was written to be performed in cathedrals was written 200-300 years ago in a certain way with long notes and no key changes because the building has such a long natural reverb that key changes would result in disharmonies etc. For the same reason fast, percussive music does not sound good performed in a church or a cathedral.
In the same chapter he also states that dance music is designed for club spaces and there’s no function for it when we’re home. I have to agree with him in many of his insights. I don’t really listen to four on the floor house/techno/edm at home ever. I do listen to electronic music but it’s always the more downtempo adventurous stuff like Flying Lotus, Lorn, Squarepusher, Ninja Tune, MoWax etc.
I have to admit I’ve never given Deadmau Five a fair chance. In my mind I’ve had him grouped with artists like Skrillex, David Guetta, Swedish House Mafia and Steve Aoki. People who took the french house sound (which I loved) and ran with it (which I didn’t love). The mask and the dumb name Deadmau Five didn’t really help. I’ve seen pictures of his studio and he seems to be a true synth dude so I appreciate that side of him.
Now giving my first chance to his music, I found the downtempo stuff actually quite okay. There’s artists that are a lot more to my tastes, but he’s not all bad actually. Much better than the ones I mentioned. Prejudice is rarely a good thing.
That David Byrne book is an interesting read. You see a similar thing happen with successful bands. Look at Coldplay - I quite liked their first couple of albums and then they went rapidly downhill after (IMO) by making ridiculous stadium bollocks. I’m sure their bank balance disagrees with me.
Bit reductive. Though I do know people who don’t listen to techno outside of clubs.
Obviously a lot of music is produced with the listening context in mind, in fact I think listening context is a very important part of how or why we engage with certain music, but that doesn’t mean that it only works in that context.
I can only imagine how awesome it would have been to hear Pavarotti sing Nessun Dorma at La Scala, but that doesn’t mean I can’t watch a YouTube video of him in my living room and be moved to tears.
I think maybe that’s why I don’t like this sort of production, as I don’t think it knows exactly which context it wants to fit into. There’s not enough grit and bite for it to be purely a club track, and the mix feels like it’s aware of how it’ll sound on a phone or shitty Bluetooth speaker. It feels like dance music without a context.
Oh I do.
Its chin stroker music. Its for other ‘producers’ to nerd off about. ‘Oh Mr Bill showed Deadmau5 how to do the microediting drippy beat squelch fart ping sound hidden pan reverb technique’
But I get it. On the one hand its techincally quite amazing. But on the other hand its musically stale, and just doesnt move me at all personally.