Off the Mark

On many of the songs that make up W:/2016ALBUM/, Deadmau5 creates a great build up that has you ready experience what he has to offer, only for the song to fall flat on the drop or just otherwise never come together to its full potential. After taking a bit of a break from producing music he has come back, but this project isn’t as noteworthy as many surely want from a new Deadmau5 album. The highlight of the album is arguably the first track “4ware,” because after that things only go downhill. It’s not so much that each track that follows is worse than the one that precedes it, it’s that Deadmau5 always gives you some hope that a track might turn out to be something more than the repetitive one that’s come before, only for none of them to overcome that.

Deadmau5 himself recently said that this album is not one of his better works. He said he felt that the album was slapped together and rushed due to it being a compilation of a year’s material that he felt doesn’t correlate. Listening to this album, it’s hard not to agree with that sentiment. On the first listen, the album shows promise, especially through the first three or four songs. But when listening to it again you realize how disconnected each song feels from the next and how the anticipation falls flat in the middle of many of the songs. The songs lose their sense of surprise far too early on and Deadmau5 stretches on some tracks for far longer than they should be such as on “Imaginary Friends” and “Three Pound Chicken Wing.” The vibe that he is going for on those songs isn’t wrong or anything, it’s just that in the context of this album he forces the ideas from those songs far too long. The songs on this album aren’t horrible, but Deadmau5 has made better in the past and this just doesn’t stack up to his past efforts.

Even though the album overall is disappointing, it does have high points and Deadmau5 has good ideas. Songs like “Cat Thruster,” “No Problem” and “Snowcone” all have great elements that make them great tracks. Hopefully Deadmau5 bounces back after this project with renewed creativity and focus on the things that made this album good to deliver us something we expect from him.