Album Review - Deadmau5 "Random Album Title"

The word "innovative" isn't thrown around much these days. Well, unless you're the bastard child of at least 10 electronic music genres and you're name's Deadmau5. Without even listening to his music, you can tell that canadian producer Joel Zimmerman who shrouds himself in a giant red mouse head (complete with light-up eyes) and has formed a supergroup with Tommy Lee entitled WTF? has never been fond of conformism.

"Random Album Title" opens with 8-minute electro-tinged stomper "Sometimes Things Get Whatever", with catchy, glitched up vocals. "Slip" and "Some Kind of Blue" flirt with trance, and then "Brazil (2nd Edit)" and "Faxing Berlin" take it home and fuck it. Deadmau5 is a keen experimenter, dabbling with trance, electro and techno with a sort of minimalism that has earned him a reputation as one of the most innovative DJs out there. With no track on the album coming in at below 6 minutes (apart from the little piano interlude before "Faxing Berlin"), make no mistake, this album is epic.

However, the problem with epic albums is that while some tracks are real dancefloor fillers, some are simply repetitive four-to-the-floor slogs that eventually get boring after a few listens. "Complications" wouldn't be a bad track if it was shortened a bit, but clocking in at almost 10 minutes, it is pretty much a filler track that is simply not needed.

Nontheless, this album is epic in all ways possible. With albums like this, Deadmau5 could very well be the most innovative act since Daft Punk.

I give Deadmau5's "Random Album Title" 4 stars!

For fans of: Calvin Harris, Paul Oakenfold, Eric Prydz, Simian Mobile Disco.