Friday Roundup: Deadmau5 Says Fellow Artists Aren’t Taking Enough Risks

Wow, what a week! We have just finished filming loads of new training, showing every stage of building, preparing and organising a killer DJ music library: It’ll be in the Digital DJ Masterclass, coming soon! Meanwhile, the launch of the DJ Mag Top 100 Poll brought a (completely unfunny) parody this week, so rather than going down that road, we thought we’d highlight some much more useful stuff for your weekend’s reading and viewing:

1. Making Music With An iPad, An Algorithm, And A Traktor Kontrol Z1 – If you’re one of the brand-new-to-DJing people who’s picked up a free copy of Traktor DJ, this article from The Verge is for you – especially alongside our Traktor DJ Beginner Tips article/video from earlier this week. Read more
2. Deadmau5 Says Fellow Electronic Dance Artists Aren’t Taking Enough Risks – CTV News interviews the mouse-headed EDM superstar, who bemoans the lack of originality in EDM, but also has some interesting ideas on a distribution model EDM artists such as him could adopt to maintain freedom in their careers. Read more
3. Cutting Shapes – How House Music Really Hit The UK – The ever-reliable Greg Wilson unearths footage of Moss Side, Manchester, UK, 1986, and the arrival of house music – a full year before received wisdom says it happened. Please watch this – this is my home city, at the exact time I was starting to go clubbing (at the nearby Hacienda) too. It’s awesome. Read more

Is EDM becoming all the same? And did you enjoy that video from 27 years ago from my lil’ home city of Manchester, England? Let me know your thoughts on this week’s posts in the comments…