The most impactful revolutions aren’t planned, plotted or premeditated, they simply happen. There’s also typically an enigmatic figure at the forefront of those aforementioned creative shifts. The son of a visual artist and a General Motors plant worker, Joel Thomas Zimmerman popularly known as Deadmau5, was born on January 5th 1981, and grew up in Niagara Falls, Ontario in Canada. He had a knack for electronics and dissecting hardware during his childhood, and eventually started working in animation and web design. His career began in the mid 1990′s, with a chiptune and demoscene movements influenced sound.

During the early stages of his career, Zimmerman continued to hone his tech skills whilst working for music software company Image Line (now FL Studios) and went on to set up his own web developer company that he called Deadmau5. He had come up with the name after finding the body of a mouse that had crawled into one of his computers and had died. He abbreviated it from ‘dead mouse’ to Deadmau5 for use as a log in for an online chat username. Known to be obsessed with computers as a child, a little later he progressed to working in local studios, co-producing a local radio show – ‘The Party Revolution’ and even contributed to the rap metal album of Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee released in 1999.

Soon, he also adopted ‘Deadmau5′ as his alias and the name came to be associated with the infamous oversized mouse head which has become synonymous with his live performances ever since even though he continues to work hard to ensure that Deadmau5 shows are a grandiose audio-visual spectacle with sophisticated light shows, he is careful not to let the visuals distract too much from the performance and utilizes touch screen technology (Lemur), Ableton Live and various pieces of hardware to bring a genuine live element to his performances. A lesser known fact is that he was given the idea to wear a headdress based on the logo by one of his friends, Jay Gordon of the industrial metal band Orgy.

His first release was an electro house track in 2006 which he produced along with Steve Duda titled, “This Is The Hook” under the alias B.S.O.D. (Blue Screen Of Death). Although the track was intended to ridicule the formulaic tendencies of mainstream house, featuring a synthesized voice announcing each component of the track, it proved to be an unexpected success and shot to #1 on the Beatport download charts and even resulted in B.S.O.D. remixing a Christine Aguilera track. In 2006 he also started producing his first solo tracks released as Deadmau5 – “Cocktail Queen” and “Faxing Berlin” (which was re-released in 2009 and enjoyed significant success).

The two aforementioned tracks gave an early indication of the wide array of styles that Zimmerman would go on to build his career upon. While “Cocktail Queen” acted as an indicator of his upfront house side, with pounding kick drums and snares underpinning a fierce analogue bass riff, “Faxing Berlin” was more understated and melodic. Zimmerman’s ability to straddle genres whilst also often incorporating techno elements have been the key to his success. Even though Zimmerman returned to his project, BSOD with Duda in 2007 for a number of releases the momentum of his Deadmau5 alias soon took hold. “Faxing Berlin” had by then been noticed by Pete Tong who promptly played it on his show and helped propel it into becoming one of the biggest dance tracks of the year. In July of the same year, Zimmerman set up his mau5trap imprint.

By 2008 the momentum had really begun to build. Deadmau5 not only went on to enter the DJ Mag Top 100 poll at #11 and become the most awarded artist at the Beatport Awards. 2008 also saw the mau5 record a BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix and release no less than 28 tracks plus numerous remixes. The releases were typically diverse, ranking from the up front electro to the blissed-out tech house. Interestingly in the same year, Zimmerman also joined hands with Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee once again, as part of the electro four piece outfit, ‘WTF?’. If 2008 turned out to be the year of momentum for Deadmau5 then 2009 was his breakthrough. It was in 2009 that he created some of his most accomplished and successful tracks to date, including the haunting and unpredictable melody of “Strobe” and the dance-floor smash hit, “Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff”.

By the end of the year Deadmau5 had become the biggest selling artist on Beatport, nominated for a Grammy (for his remix of Morgan Page’s “The Longest Road”) and headlined and performed festivals around the globe. 2010 followed on in the same vein with Deadmau5 picking up three awards at the Beatport Music Awards, a Juno Award for the “For Want Of A Better Name” album and a live performance at the Winter Olympics.

Up to this point, his career was earmarked by a series of firsts and his productions had shattered a number of records. At the 54th annual Grammy Awards in 2012, he gave a monumental performance as part of the prestigious ceremony’s first-ever telecast celebrating electronic music. He was also the first electronic artist in history to grace the cover of the globally renowned magazine, Rolling Stone. In remarkable fashion, Deadmau5 then went on to release iconic album’s such as 4×4 = 12, For Lack of Better Name & > album title goes here <.

More recently, in November 2013, Zimmerman deleted three years worth of music from his SoundCloud account, replacing them with an EP of seven melancholy piano sonatas (simply called 7), named after the Latin translations for the Seven Deadly Sins and has also announced a highly awaited forthcoming 2 CD album. Over time, he’s garnered over 8 million fans on his Facebook page and over 2.5 million followers on Twitter.

Apart from his music, Deadmau5 is also known the world over for the stellar audio-visual production at his shows which also led him to establish the famous daunting cube structure seen at most of his shows. He is also a known cat lover and any fan of electronic music would know that owing to his shenanigans with his cat, Prof. Meowingtons and of late has launched a popular run of jocular coffee runs.

Check out some of the finest and most popular works of the the man under the large mouse head which you shouldn’t miss;

Whilst Deadmau5′s success has grown Zimmerman has worked hard to build the accompanying branding and image including turning the grinning mouse head from the Deadmau5 logo into a mask with lights to perform in. Get ready to catch him live as Sunburn bring the superstar to your city this month, click here for details and be sure to check out our very recent interview with the man himself!