It is no secret that the EDM superstar Deadmau5 is a pro at instigating arguments. He isn’t instigating purely for the sake of arguing however; he believes that he has a genuine point and I have no problem with that. His comments on the EDM scene have caught the eyes of other artists around the world. The latest artist to raise an issue with Deadmau5‘s remark is Afrojack. In Afrojack‘s interview with Billboard he said:

“You’re never just pressing play. If you’re a guy in a cube with a mask on, you can press play. Deadmau5 also said himself he’s not a DJ — don’t talk about stuff you don’t know about. I don’t know shit about LED walls and giant mouse heads; I can’t judge it. But if you put four CD players in front of me or [Sebastian Ingrosso] or even Skrillex, we’ve been DJ’ing for so long, we can do a lot of things with those CD players.”

I see where Afrojack is coming from here (although the Skrillex thing is a bit of a stretch considering he’s only been producing/performing for a mere 5 years). Lets face it, Deadmau5 has a very unique setup and does not use turntables. His performances are mostly experience based (as are most EDM performances these days) and you are likely not to hear tracks that vary much from the original versions. This sounds a lot like DJing but in fact he is “in a big silly mousehead.. twiddlin a knob or somethin” as he said himself in a blog post on his tumblr. I simply believe that the word DJ gets thrown around far too much these days. It is one thing to be able to beat match and put together a flawless and beautiful set and it’s another thing to press play and mess around with the flanger effect for a few hours (cough cough, Paris Hilton). Afrojack does have a point: experienced and talented DJs can do a lot with their CDJs. It is their instrument if you will. Deadmau5 on the other hand does not see it quite so:

So you know how to use 4 CD players eh? Rad. But if you REALLY want to impress me, try setting the clock on my microwave to the right time. — deadmau5 (@deadmau5) January 9, 2013

I would definitely agree that those microwave clocks can be a real pain but I would have to say that CDJs are, in fact, more difficult to use. After the dust has cleared I think we can all agree that they both raise interesting points. I don’t think that they will ever fully understand each other. They are in different genres and have completely different styles so there really isn’t any need for them to. They are both brilliant musicians in their own right and they really shouldn’t even be bothered by each other’s remarks.

– Jacob