Many of us know that Deadmau5 is not one to hold back his true feelings and always makes an effort to broadcast his point to his millions of fans and followers. Whether it be a scorning rant against Madonna’s antics in Miami or bashing the EDM – pop cross over scene, Joel Zimmerman has a tendency to stir the pot. He has landed the cover of this months issue of Rolling Stone Magazine where he talks about how he repeatedly refuses to accept pop record offers and bashes ‘press play DJs’ like David Guetta, Skrillex, and even himself.

Yesterday Joel decided he needed to let people know how he really feels about ‘press play DJing’ with a long post on his tumblr titled ‘we all hit play’. In the article, he explains how the live element of DJing is not difficult. He talks about how easy it is to beatmatch, “beatmatching isnt even a fucking skill as far as im concerned anyway. so what, you can count to 4. cool. i had that skill down when i was 3, so dont give me that argument please”. He goes into detail explaining what his live performance consists of, as well as his unhooked sets, all the while insisting that it is not hard in the slightest bit. As you would expect, this caused some uproar in the DJ/producer industry. A-Trak, who is one of the most technical and talented DJs in the industry (he won his first DMC DJ world championship at the young age of 15, worked as Kanye Wests touring DJ, and has become one of the most in demand producers in the industry) tweeted a series of responses to Zimmerman’s rant…

Several other DJs along with many of his twitter followers were not pleased with what he had to say. Although his rant seemed very harsh and unusual because he is essentially demeaning his own profession, it seems that many people missed the point he was attempting to get across. Despite the apparent hostility and ignorance behind his post, it appears that Joel was trying to say that the true artistic expression is in the studio, not on the turntables and that the artist isn’t who makes the live experience special, it is the fans who come to each show. From my perspective it seems that Joel is tired of being called something he is not (a great DJ)… However I don’t think this was a good way to go about getting his point across. This isn’t his first rant, but this one hit home with a lot of his peers and I would imagine that some of them would find this ignorant and inaccurate. Has Joel finally gone off the deep end? Check out his original post here.