Album Review: Deadmau5 - album title goes here

Deadmau5
> album title goes here <
Rating: Jeez Lady

After blasting Madonna recently for her appearance at Ultra Music Festival to his bold claim that artists such as David Guetta and Skrillex do nothing but press play on their iPods, Canadian producer/DJ Joel Zimmerman, aka Deadmau5, really needs to put out some music to back his ass up. After listening to his latest record > album title goes here < he is going to have to do much better. Basically a compilation of tracks that he's had out for over two years, tweaked and spruced up for the release, it is a surprisingly lazy grouping of dated sounding genre exercises. If ever the term "on auto-pilot" needed a definition, one would only have to point to this album.

Opener "Subliminal" is all beats and no hook, coasting on a tired bass wobble.



Collaboration with Wolfgang Gartner "Channel 42" is a murky four to the floor banger that hardly does enough to warrant the high-profile nature of them working together.



Even the other collaborations come across half-assed or even phoned in. "Professional Griefers" with Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance sounds like he's channeling a bored Marilyn Manson over tired house beats,



while "Failbait," a head-shaking work with Cypress Hill (???) is basically rap 101, with Cypress Hill barely able to muster energy to get their verses out.



The rest of > album title goes here < is rote, EDM by the numbers, touching on trance ("The Veldt"), bland EDM ("Maths"), and generic house ("October"). Only a couple of times does he shake things up a bit, and point into a direction that might have made much more of an impact. When he slows things down and takes a breather he can actually make some emotional music. "Sleepless" is a melancholy, down tempo track with an interesting use of samples,

"Closer" takes reference from the notes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and wraps them in swirl of synths and driving beats,



while the menacing "Take Care of the Proper Paperwork" is by far the most interesting thing Zimmerman has ever done, using lots of different textures and sounds to create a wonderful sonic template, pushing the track through several movements, ending on a sad, auto-tuned vocal that is surprisingly moving.



Aside from these brief moments of clarity, > album title goes here < is basically a toothless compendium of slightly rehashed work that does nothing to make Deadmau5 stand out in an already crowded field. Based on this tired record, Guetta and Skrillex have no need to worry about Deadmau5 eclipsing him. They can just press play on their iPods and come up with something far more interesting.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and piques one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.