Logo
DiS Needs You: Save our site »
  • Logo_home2
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • In Photos
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Search
  • Community
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • Blog
  • Community

THIS SITE HAS BEEN ARCHIVED AND CLOSED.

Please join the conversation over on our new forums »

If you really want to read this, try using The Internet Archive.

deadmau5

W:/2016ALBUM/

Label: mau5trap Release Date: 02/12/2016

104304
JonFalcone by Jon Falcone December 5th, 2016

Who’d have thought, when Chris Morris and his gang thought of the Cake sketch in Brass Eye, they’d predict the future of music?

But deadmau5 has done it. He’s been doing it for years, and to great success. W:/2016ALBUM is a throwaway series of club-dance-house nothings that carve migraines out of industrial electronics. ‘2448’ has the most gleefully offensive hammer to the head synth line since Robbie Williams’ ‘Rock DJ’, with that pounding, stiflingly offensive, one-note drone of trapped celebrity wind.

So let deadmau5’s listeners eat Cake and suffer the elongated hell they deserve. ‘2448’ goes nowhere, does nothing and there is, literally, some kind of wind or creak sound at the end of it. The following faux funk of ‘Cat Thruster’ gives way to the ‘Billie Jean’ drum shuffle, which is a welcome moment of musicality, before old NES soundtracks start blipping out over basslines that Shobaleader were thrumming out in the embryo, before their mass or fine motor skills were developed.

Nothing goes anywhere, and yet every song is so long. It’s painful. What is he doing and why? Does ‘Cat Thruster’ really need to be five-and-a-half minutes? It’s followed by ‘Deus Ex Machina’ which, unlike its namesake phrase, is not a force of unexpected salvation but instead a mid-Nineties Warp Records aping piece of electro-clicking that phases in and out of a pointless, disjointed, ambient segment over the course of six-and-a-half minutes.

In some ways the mau5 deserves admiration – this musical equivalent of a Golden Razzies nominated film will probably keep Joel Zimmerman in multi-million-dollar comfort for the next year or so and the album’s highlight comes in ‘Glish’, which is a highlight purely because A) it’s a merciful two minutes and B:) it sounds precariously close to Aphex Twin’s ‘Windowlicker’.

There’s a population out there that loves deadmau5, and will gain hours of enjoyment from hearing these bloated, meandering electro doodles. People who love sound squiggles that writhe like an electronic drill placed on the brow and ineptly plunged into the brain are welcome to them, but its symptomatic of a rapidly dying art. Lonely Island captured everything that’s wrong with superstar DJs with their ‘When Will The Bass Drop?’ parody. But at least they had the courtesy to stick a tune in it.

![104304](http://dis.resized.images.s3.amazonaws.com/540x310/104304.jpeg)
  • 1
    Jon Falcone's Score
Log-in to rate this record out of 10
Share on
   
Love DiS? Become a Patron of the site here »


LATEST


  • Why Music Journalism Matters in 2024


  • Drowned in Sound is back!


  • Drowned in Sound's 21 Favourite Albums of the Year: 2020


  • Drowned in Sound to return as a weekly newsletter


  • Lykke Li's Sadness Is A Blessing


  • Glastonbury 2019 preview playlist + ten alternative must sees



Left-arrow

Various

Run Lola Run

Mobback
104303
104308

Kate Bush

Before the Dawn

Mobforward
Right-arrow


LATEST

    news


    Why Music Journalism Matters in 2024

  • 106145
  • news


    Drowned in Sound is back!

  • 106143

    news


    Drowned in Sound's 21 Favourite Albums of the Y...

  • 106141
  • news


    Drowned in Sound to return as a weekly newsletter

  • 106139

    Playlist


    Lykke Li's Sadness Is A Blessing

  • 106138
  • Festival Preview


    Glastonbury 2019 preview playlist + ten alterna...

  • 106137

    Interview


    A Different Kind Of Weird: dEUS on The Ideal Crash

  • 106136
  • Festival Review


    Way Out East: DiS Does Sharpe Festival 2019

  • 106135
MORE


    news


    The Neptune Music Prize 2016 - Vote Now

  • 103918
  • Takeover


    The Winner Takes It All

  • 50972

    Takeover


    10 Things To Not Expect Your Record Producer To...

  • 93724
  • review


    The Mars Volta - Deloused In The Comatorium

  • 4317

    review


    Sonic Youth - Nurse

  • 6044
  • feature


    New Emo Goth Danger? My Chemical Romance confro...

  • 89578

    feature


    DiS meets Justice

  • 27270
  • news


    Our Independent music filled alternative to New...

  • 104374
MORE

Drowned in Sound
  • DROWNED IN SOUND
  • HOME
  • SITE MAP
  • NEWS
  • IN DEPTH
  • IN PHOTOS
  • RECORDS
  • RECOMMENDED RECORDS
  • ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
  • FESTIVAL COVERAGE
  • COMMUNITY
  • MUSIC FORUM
  • SOCIAL BOARD
  • REPORT ERRORS
  • CONTACT US
  • JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
  • FOLLOW DiS
  • GOOGLE+
  • FACEBOOK
  • TWITTER
  • SHUFFLER
  • TUMBLR
  • YOUTUBE
  • RSS FEED
  • RSS EMAIL SUBSCRIBE
  • MISC
  • TERM OF USE
  • PRIVACY
  • ADVERTISING
  • OUR WIKIPEDIA
© 2000-2025 DROWNED IN SOUND