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About deadmau5

Joel Thomas Zimmerman was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario in January 1981. He grew up in the Niagara Falls and Toronto area, taught himself music production on early 1990s home computers, and started releasing tracks online in the early 2000s under various aliases before settling on the deadmau5 name — derived from a dead mouse he found in his computer case as a teenager — for the first commercial releases. The early catalogue from 2003 to 2007 was distributed primarily through online dance-music communities (Beatport, MP3.com, the original Play Records and mau5trap singles series) and built a modest but engaged underground following before the broader commercial breakthrough. The breakthrough landed with the 2008 album Random Album Title, released on his own mau5trap recordings label, which produced Faxing Berlin, Not Exactly and Brazil. For Lack of a Better Name, released later in 2008, doubled down on the success and produced Ghosts 'n' Stuff (with Rob Swire of Pendulum on vocals) and I Remember (with Kaskade), the two singles that broke deadmau5 to a mainstream electronic-music audience and remain among the most-streamed records in his catalogue. 4×4=12, released in 2010, delivered Sofi Needs a Ladder, Some Chords, Animal Rights with Wolfgang Gartner, and the eight-and-a-half-minute progressive-house track Strobe — which has anchored as the closer for the live show on essentially every Cube-era tour cycle and remains the single most fan-defining record in his discography. >album title goes here<, released in 2012, produced The Veldt with Chris James and Professional Griefers with Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance. while(1<2), released as a 25-track double album in 2014, was a genuinely ambitious record — pulling in Colleen D'Agostino, Imogen Heap and Cypress Hill's Sen Dog across its long runtime — and remains the deepest catalogue dive of his discography. W:/2016ALBUM/, released in 2016, leaned into a tighter progressive-house template with Snowcone and Three Pound Chicken Wing. where's the drop?, released in 2018 as a fully orchestral re-recording of his back catalogue with an actual orchestra, was the most ambitious crossover deadmau5 has attempted into the classical-and-film-score world. The more recent catalogue has shifted toward shorter-form EPs and side projects — Stuff I Used to Do (2017), the Polaris (with Lights) EP, Pareidolia (2023) and the regular mau5trap label releases — alongside film score work and contributions to other film, television and game soundtracks. The mau5trap record label, which Zimmerman founded in 2007, has launched the careers of producers including Eric Prydz, REZZ (the Canadian producer who broke through mau5trap in 2017 and has become one of the biggest electronic acts of her generation), No Mana, i_o and a long roster of progressive-house and electronic-experimental producers. Zimmerman lives primarily on a property outside Toronto where he has built out a recording studio, a modular synthesizer workshop and the streaming setup that supports the Twitch joel.exe channel, which has run regular live production sessions for over a decade. The Steam-released video game Absolute Zero, which deadmau5 developed alongside a small team and shipped in 2020, is one of the few examples of an A-list electronic artist actually shipping a playable game rather than licensing the IP — the game is an electronic-music-themed action title with original deadmau5 soundtrack. He has been outspoken on industry issues throughout his career — frank about ticket-pricing, scalping, the Vegas residency economic model, the merit of pre-recorded DJ sets — and has feuded publicly with other producers, Vegas residency operators and the broader EDM-influencer industry, in ways that have made him one of the most-quoted electronic-music figures of the past two decades. He has won two Juno Awards (Canada's national music award) for Electronic Album of the Year, been Grammy-nominated multiple times, and held a long-running BSOD: Better Off Alone alias with Steve Duda. At forty-five in 2026, deadmau5 is still touring the Cube V3 production rig, still running mau5trap, and still streaming the joel.exe Twitch channel.

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