4 x 4 = 12
4/5
Joel Thomas Zimmerman is a live producer best known for the huge mouse head he wears onstage – actually a 3D, LED lighting rig with six-amp power. Given that 0.4 amps can stop your heart, Deadmau5 is obviously prepared to risk all for his art. Now it’s all very well putting on a jaw-gapingly spectacular live show, but is there more to his records than the second-hand frisson of an imagined/remembered Big Night Out? Or does the doof-doof-doof of his post-techno/trance/electro-house hybrid become pfft-pfft-pfft?
Yes. And absolutely not. The Deadmau5 of ‘Animal Rights’ and ‘I Said’ is pumped up on the same sexy electro juice as Daft Punk, Justice and Boys Noize, while ‘Right This Second’ nods to Laurent Garnier, but he neatly balances the listener’s anticipation of the next sound with unpredictable chord-progression resolutions. The weakest track is vocal-led epic ‘Raise Your Weapon’, but this morphs mid-point into dubstep, paving the way for the filthy ‘One Trick Pony’ and proving that whichever way it’s played, 4 x 4 = 12 adds up.
