Deadmau5 ProfileInsert Adjective To Describe Joel Zimmerman's Stale Album may be a better title for the Mau5's latest 'EDM' offering. Forever outspoken, the Canadian producer's choice of music, collaborations, style and substance isn't just unfathomable and confusing, it's like Zimmerman can't be arsed.
Take Failbait, an awful attempt at hip hop which includes Cypress Hill, rappers last relevant when Home Alone was first released. Professional Griefers fares little better as Zimmerman attempts to marry hard rock and electronica with lyrics from My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way. The marriage fails, dismally – both filed for divorce.
There are bright moments, particularly when the Mau5 goes back into his hole and produces The Veldt, Fn Pig and Maths. All have a commercial bent and the familiar approach of euphoric hands-in-the-air and teenage dribbling, but they're undeniably catchy. All tracks are superbly produced and mastered from Zimmerman, who is clearly a technical prodigy. But therein is the problem: there's no soul, depth or meaning.
But perhaps that is exactly what Zimmerman wants. Is Album Title Goes Here deliberately misleading and laded with obscurities? Maybe. After all, Zimmerman regularly preaches on the failures of electronic music and fires verbal missiles in the direction of DJs. Album Title Goes Here is banal and clichéd. Its basic techno, house, (terrible) hip hop and dubstep for the uneducated or those with little or no appreciation of electronic music. Not that the Mau5 will give a 5hit – he'll be counting his dollar5 and watching his 5tock soar.
And anyway, whoever coined the 'EDM' term – electronic dance music – should be rounded up with their firmly head wedged in a Mau5 trap.
