Deadmau5 would be mean and moody if only he wasn’t quite so Canadian. Instead he sits, coolly answering questions with only his left shoe shaking to reveal an impatient sense that he would rather be somewhere else. Like preparing for his Nokia Lumia Live gig which is just three hours away.
“Tonight we’re going to light up the Millbank tower,” he says. He’s never played a skyscraper before, but he shrugs about what that involves in terms of technology: “I don’t even know.” Drive Productions deserves the credit for the animation and the show. He says, “I’ll turn up with my laptop, mixer and two instrument controllers.” Hopefully there should be a “few people around,” to listen.
“It has cool technology and I can’t wait to get into it,”deadmau5 on the Nokia Lumia 800…
Deadmau5 says he prepared for the event by submitting an eight minute track a month ago, but his ideas weren’t even “fully formed until about 30 minutes ago,” He knew what to expect but “it was just me running around in the dark, but I’m running in the dark with another company – Drive Productions – that knows what they’re doing.”
At the moment he’s on his way to South Africa to tour. The remix he’s prepared for Nokia Lumia Live is eight minutes of essential deadmau5: “I wanted to condense as much as I could, coherently,” he says.
Answering these kind of questions are not that much fun either. Does he want to work with Lady Gaga? – he does, “If I was into it”. Does he want to work with Will-i-am? “Actually, you know, I will not…” he laughs. What’s it like wearing those big mouse heads? They’re heavy, if he’d known he’d have chosen something lighter, “like a headband with mouse ears.” Tonight he’s wearing a helmet shaped like a giant chunk of cheese.
Pop and fame are slightly dirty words, but social media and the idea of connecting people that’s behind the new Nokia Lumia, are more to his liking:
Social media is “Super important, well it is to me. I wouldn’t say everybody should have a voice of their own – maybe I shouldn’t” he laughs. “It’s important for me to educate and tell people how this all works for me. My career started very grassroots, very online…everybody who was on my fan page seven years ago were actually my friends… and I’ve kept that kind of vibe, now there are four million of them…and ok, now I don’t know all of them.”
It offers “a candid insight into how s*** works in my head.”
He’s seen the Nokia Lumia 800, and he likes it: “It has cool technology, and I can’t wait to get into it.”
After tonight he’s got a tour to finish, then a studio to build in Toronto – and then he’ll “lock the door throw away the key, and work solidly for a year.”
But before that is Nokia Lumia Live: “The only thing I’m bummed about is that it’s going to be over like that…” He snaps his fingers, puts on an oversize green Parka, and is out the door. Until tonight…