DeadMau5 In Da House

The lights. The bass. The mousehead. Deadmau5, who is number four on DJMag’s top 100 DJs, puts on a show like no other DJ/producer.

The award-winning producer Deadmau5, or Joel Zimmerman, performed an unprecedented six shows in a row from October 4 to 9 at Roseland Ballroom as part of his “Meowington’s Hax” tour (which is named after his cat, Meowington). The previous record was held by Rage Against the Machine, with five consecutive performances at Roseland in 1996.

Mau5 was about 30 feet up in his booth, overlooking the 3,000-person crowd. He was like a puppeteer, at his computer making it all happen.

The crowd was hypnotized with the mixture of new and old songs. I was front row and up close and personal with mau5 and Sofi. Though the view was incredible from any angle, the mind-fucking light show was best seen from the back.

It was a visual masterpiece. The lights, visuals and the bass took the audience through a virtual adventure with ease. It was well orchestrated and cued up. The hundreds of thousands of mini lights stretched across the back of the stage formed retro graphics seen in 1990s video games, like Super Mario. The visual during “FML” was like a 1980s arcade game. It was a scene viewed from the inside of a car, driving through a virtual world surrounded by what looked like digitized upside down icicles. We slowly picked up speed and the icicles began zooming past us, synchronized with classic laser-sounds: Pew-pew, pew-pew. Then the bass dropped: Bom, bom, bom. The crowd flung their arms in the air in synchronization with the 130 beats per minute.

My body ached for the next 24 hours: I had bruises on my arms and chest from bumping to the bass against the railing. And I slept the following night for 18 hours, with the beats raging through my head, and my foot still tapping to “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.”