Deadmau5

Why Daft Punk Have to Keep the Masks On

Are we not men?

Why Daft Punk Have to Keep the Masks on

It's too late now, and it's probably been too late for the last 10 years. Daft Punk, the French electronic duo who has singlehandedly dominated the press for the last month, will be wearing their robot suits for the rest of their lives. There will never be a reveal, a coming out, or a change of tone ... More >>

Why Are Old School Electronic Artists Annoyed With EDM?

Broadly speaking, if you're an electronic music fan over 40, you probably dig Danny Tenaglia more than Skrillex. And chances are, if you're a Skrillex fan under the age of 30, you're like, "Who the hell is Danny Tenaglia?" Coachella 2013 exemplified the generation gap in the world of dance music. O ... More >>

The 10 Douchiest Drummers of All Time

By Nate Jackson What would music be without a beat, a rhythm or a backbone? Though they qualify as the first instruments ever created, the drums are probably the last thing most music fans can live without. And while we worship plenty of drummers in modern music, there are some Gods of Thunder who ... More >>

Why EDM Is Thriving While Other Genres Are Sinking

DJs are the new rock stars? Maybe. (Although chefs are already the new rock stars.) Still, the big name DJs do seem to be living pretty large, what with the constant travel to exotic locations, goofily-clad fans, eager women, drugs and parties. Just swap MacBooks for guitars and it doesn't look so d ... More >>

Twitter Has Ruined the Art of the Musician Feud

Remember when musician fights used to be interesting--or at least memorable for more than two minutes? It's hard to imagine as we expend Twitter scrolling energy on Azealia Banks v. Angel Haze, Gaga vs. the Osbournes, Deadmau5 vs. Madonna, and the rest of the noise. Yet unbelievably, there was a tim ... More >>

Why Is Everyone So Pissed About the EDM Reality Show?

By Andy Hermann As the Hollywood-based casting guru behind Jersey Shore and A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, Doron Ofir knows how the lowbrow culture game is played. But even the man who gave the world Snooki might have been caught off-guard by the outrage over one of his latest projects: a compet ... More >>

Top 12"s of '12: Last Looks, People

Welcome to 2013. Welcome to the future. 2013 is not like other years. It's different. It's a whole new world. A world in which Grammy Nominee and general music visionary Al Walser is not only still alive, but will lead us all to redefine our very idea of art (seriously, think about it). A world i ... More >>

Avicii - Radio City Musical Hall - 9/26/2012

Avicii Radio City Music Hall Wednesday, September 26 Better than: The Rockettes In the promo video for last night's Avicii show, 52,171 viewers found the producer/DJ walking through the Times Square venue that he would soon play and sitting in the seats around which his fans would soon dance. "I m ... More >>

Live: Madonna Brings Her Set Pieces, Sex Pieces, And Masterpieces To Yankee Stadium

Madonna w/ Avicii Yankee Stadium Thursday, September 6 Better than: The VMAs. If ever you need a concise summary of Madonna's year, the billing for her New York dates will do nicely. There's Madonna, her name in no way styled to resemble that of a party drug. And there's Avicii, a Swedish stadium- ... More >>

Live: IDentity Festival Walks The Line Between Raving And Raging At Jones Beach

IDentity Festival Jones Beach Theater Saturday, July 28 Better than: A rainout. 3:47 p.m., Babylon-bound LIRR train Seated across from me are two college girls, a blonde and a brunette, and one college boy. They're wearing neon and denim, a combination I will be seeing a lot of today. His shorts ... More >>

Seven Electronic Songs To Herald The 2012 Olympic Games

Summer Olympics season is imminent: Golden rings crop up on magazine covers, newspapers dedicate space to English beverages and foodstuffs, Morgan Freeman's rich, reassuring baritone returns to prime time in the form of credit-card shilling, businesses all over town announce their own "Olympics Of [ ... More >>

EDC 2012: The Underground Has Left The Building

Twenty years after rave culture first entered the American mainstream, the success of a festival like Electric Daisy Carnival makes one wonder: Can electronic dance music retain its warehouse roots and peace, love, unity and respect (PLUR) on this level? EDC, whose organizers claim they sold out th ... More >>

EDC 2012: Calvin Harris Plays CDs of Himself Singing

Dance music is fighting for its soul. The charts are filled with tracks (Rihanna, Flo Rida) that borrow from the ecstatic trance and pulsing grooves of electronic dance music. The last time pop was so infatuated with the dance floor was 1979, the year disco died. This time around fans are more sa ... More >>

EDC 2012: Coachella or Electric Daisy Carnival: Which One is Better?

See also: Our Complete Coachella Coverage Dance music is coming to an arena near you: Kaskade will be the first DJ ever to play Staples Center (July 27). And mainstream concert promoters such as Live Nation are diving into the electronic dance explosion. Electric Daisy Carnival, which is being hel ... More >>

Madonna Searches For Molly, Finds Herself Embroiled In A Brand-New Controversy

Ultra Music Festival pummeled Miami's Bayfront Park last weekend, motivating innumerable fist pumps over thirty hours of music, but it was the brief speech by a 53-year-old woman wearing a shirt emblazoned with the letters "MDNA" that has prompted disbelief within parts of the electronic dance music ... More >>

Gene Simmons Dubs Himself The Ultimate Judge Of Authenticity In Pop Music

Kiss bass player/reality-TV star/political gadfly Gene Simmons let his legendary tongue loose earlier this week during a press conference announcing his band's summer tour with Mötley Crüe. The two-headed bill, which will be at the PNC Bank Arts Center on September 21 and Jones Beach on September ... More >>

Getting the Drop on the Hammerstein with the Cosmic Opera

Turntables are nice, but aerialists are even nicer

In Defense Of Dave Grohl

Dave Grohl had a good time at the Grammys on Sunday. The Foo Fighters won pretty much every rock-oriented award possible, he reminded everyone that he's got the power-ballad game on lock, and he even got to show off his sweet Slayer T-shirt. Once again, everything came up Grohl. The most likable man ... More >>

The Grammys: Rock and Grohl

When past and future collide, does the present win?

Oddsmaking: Is The Best Dance Recording Grammy Basically Skrillex's To Lose?

If you think the opinions of critics and passionate fans of rock and rap and pop and country mean nothing to the Grammy Awards, being a dance-music fan widens the gap that much more. Essentially, if you're allergic to bottle service and/or newbs with glow sticks, you're better off crying into your p ... More >>

Live-Blogging The 2012 Grammys: Tributes, Tribulations, Skrillex, And The Return Of Adele

via Cats Who Look Like SkrillexWill this cat win Best New Artist?​Welcome to Sound of the City's liveblog of the 54th Annual Grammys, coming to you live from a couch in Astoria. There are quite a few questions lurking around tonight's ceremony. Will Adele sweep the three major categories in wh ... More >>

Oddsmaking: Who Will Win This Year's Best New Artist Trophy At The Grammys?

In this week's Voice I wrote about Skrillex, the emo-dude-gone-dubstep-auteur who's spawned a bunch of funny-Photoshop blogs and garnered five Grammy nominations. One of the categories he's nominated in is one of the Big Four—Best New Artist, which seems to have shaken off its "one-way ticket ... More >>

Underwhelmed And Overstimulated, The Finale: Jay-Z And Kanye West Fiddle While The Underground Gets Wasted

Smell that money burning. ​This concludes Sound of the City's year-end roundtable, a conversation about pop music in 2011 between Tom Ewing, Eric Harvey, Maura Johnston, Nick Murray, and Katherine St. Asaph. Read it all again. Thanks for the handoff, Nick, and thanks to Katherine, Tom and esp ... More >>

Q&A: Crosstown Rebels Boss Damian Lazarus On Sexual Danger, Dr. Dre Starting Burning Man & When Keeping It Real Goes Right

Camilo Fuentealba​​"Look at me, Damien! It's all for you," says a possessed nanny before jumping out a window with a noose around her neck in 1976's The Omen. After Resident Advisor released the 2011 edition of its Top 100 DJs poll earlier this week, one might be tempted to think of the nann ... More >>

Wild Flag, Method Man, Cyndi Lauper And More: Your Guide To The Weekend's Biggest Shows

Those Darlins, hangin' out in those giant pipes.​The mouse-headed DJ Deadmau5 finally finished his six-night stand at the Roseland Ballroom earlier this week (in one of the week's strangest press releases, I learned that the event was commemorated by a fancy cake that placed his signature head ... More >>

Portishead and Deadmau5 Shift the Focus

This Week In The Voice: Portishead And Deadmau5 Get Screened, Neon Marshmallow Arrives In New York, And The Collected Chuck Eddy

​In this week's Village Voice, out now: I look at how Portishead and Deadmau5 took back the screen in their live settings; Christopher R. Weingarten talks to the folks behind the new-to-NYC experimental-music fest Neon Marshmallow; and Michael Hoinski chats with the great Chuck Eddy on the occ ... More >>

This Week in the Voice: Footloose Remake, Begging Your Pardon, Mr. Obama

​This week in the Voice, out today: Graham Rayman details the activities of Obama's Pardons Office. Rayman discusses policy and some heartbreaking cases. Robert Sietsema checks out North Carolina-style East Village restaurant The Cardinal, which is partially owned by Dov Charney. Maura Johns ... More >>

Live: Deadmau5 Gets The Heads Bobbing At Roseland

Deadmau5 Roseland Ballroom Friday, October 7 Better than: Waiting for people to show up to an empty Turntable.fm room. It's a tricky thing, the dance concert. Do you treat it like a regular show and face the performer in a gesture of celebrity worship, or do you lose yourself in the music, figur ... More >>

Deadmau5, K-Holes, Screaming Females, And More: Your Guide To The Weekend's Biggest Shows

The week brought us Jon Brion and Shellac and Sam Sparro (not to mention a handful of surprise Occupy Wall Street pop-ins), and that wide spectrum of genres is also represented in this weekend's concert listings. Tonight Deadmau5, who Maura has just informed me stands out as the only artist to be n ... More >>

Deadmau5

Gang Gang Dance

Turntable.fm Is Fun, But It's Not Really About "Discovery," Right?

Check out this hot new band! From 20 years ago! ​Now that clones of the social-DJing service Turntable.fm have started popping up around the Internet, and the service has started getting amounts of money that the musicians featured on it could only dream of for the most part, it's time to mayb ... More >>

Madeon Gets Hands-On With 39 Pop Songs

​ Just when mashups seemed a horse corpse well flogged by the likes of Glee and Girl Talk, the prodigal son of Discovery-era Daft Punk and the very best of Dr. Luke's blockbuster pop comes along to breathe life into the genre. The 17-year-old wunderkind known as Madeon (he's based in Nantes, F ... More >>

Live: Shit Robot Starts LCD Soundsystem's Dance Party on Night Three

photo by Rebecca SmeyneLCD Soundsystem in Baltimore, September 2010 Better Than: A really good laugh-cry. It's the third of LCD Soundsystem's final five shows, all leading up to the band's final hurrah at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, when we're almost positive that the stadium will spontaneo ... More >>

Week in Review: Weezy Freed

Welcome to my life, Weezy.​So Lil Wayne is finally a free man. Perhaps a lonely free man, but a free man nonetheless. It's been a hell of a two weeks for the law around here, in all honesty. After last week's barrage of club closings, this week brought news of yet more: 171 Lombardy was raided ... More >>

Live: Deadmau5 Lights Up An Already Lit-Up Crowd At Roseland

Clearly reaching for Daft Punk-ian heights. Pics by Chris, more below.​Deadmau5/Erol Alkan/Afrojack Roseland Ballroom Friday, October 29 In the 1920s, the Roseland Ballroom was known as "the home of refined dancing," playing host to the likes of Louis Armstrong and Count Basie. These days, De ... More >>

Mouse Tracks

Mickey was just the beginning

Stream Deadmau5's Set At Provocateur Last Night

​Fresh off his stint DJing the MTV Video Music Awards (netting him invaluable 10-second bursts of airtime!), electro-house misfit Deadmau5 dropped by swank West Side club Provocateur last night ("It is rumored that entry will be like getting into Fort Knox") and apparently UStreamed his entire ... More >>

A Nightlife (And Ice-Skating) Enthusiast's Guide To Thanksgiving Eve

NYC is a town of transplants, a fact that's never more obvious than during the holiday season. While thousands of New Yorkers take off work early and spend hours upon hours in traffic, at the airport, and stuck in train stations, we think those of you who are left in town should make the most of i ... More >>

Interview: Electric Zoo Organizers Mike Bindra and Laura de Palma on Techno Outdoors, Dance-Music Geeks, and Port-o-Potties

Photo courtesy of Plexi PRJames Murphy and Pat Mahoney aren't Mike Bindra and Laura de Palma, but we couldn't resist this photo. The United States is most definitely at a different point in the electronic music festival life cycle than Europe. Without getting into Europe's stage (dirty 30s?), it's ... More >>

Joris Voorn's Life After Turntables

A Dutch visionary blazes new digital trails with Balance 014

More SXSW 2009 Bands Announced

SXSW 2009: the sound of a thousand Babydick jokes cracking. Full list, with arbitrarily bolded highlights, below.