Music

Deadmau5 rants on "bottle poppin'" collaborations

by Tyler Munro

Part of being a successful electronic artist is working with other musicians, and as Deadmau5’s profile continues to increase, the Toronto native is obviously being asked to work with any number of acts. The thing is, it’s not exactly something he’s fond of.

“Theres a perfectly valid reason why i dont usually enjoy the idea of a ‘collaboration’ … allthough [sic] you can rest assure whatever collaborations i have done in the past were the results of stuff im totally into, like Flipside, the Foo’s, Cyprus Hill, etc,” he writes.

“All to [sic] often, there’s an influx of ‘big names’ that would get thrown around the label from time to time and of course, they fly off the table and out the fuckin door faster than they hit my desk. eg. do you want to do a track with big name X, remix huge pop act y, etc etc. no. i fucking don’t. i really REALLY don’t,” he continues.

He continues on, not naming names but making his argument pretty obvious.

“[T]he last thing i want to do… is take the meanings and feelings of a piece of music and have some fucking dipshit blab about lookin sexy, poppin bottles, ‘droppin bass’, or ANYTHING club related,” he writes.

While the entire rant is worth reading (spelling mistakes and all), the gist of it comes from a recent bit of inspiration. Deadmau5 says he was so inspired by Ray Bradbury’s short story The Veldt that he decided to make some music based around it, a soundtrack of sorts. After finishing the songs he put them on his Soundcloud, as he often does, and was surprised to see that a fan (Chris James) had responded with his own “finished” version of the song, adding his own vocals to a track Deadmau5 himself wasn’t sure needed them.

“for whatever reason, i took a shot and checked it out… i was fucking nearly in tears. Not because i think he’s the best singer in the world… but because HE FUCKING GOT IT. TOTALLY and COMPLETELY got it,” he writes.

Head to Deadmau5’s blog to read the whole thing.