Joel Zimmerman, Halcyon441, or "deadmau5". The name was created after he found one in his computer, tried to use "Dead Mouse" as an IRC nickname, and shortened it to the 8-character limit using 1337. But that doesn't matter: what does matter is that he's hella talented as a progressive/electro musician. Born in Canada in 1981, deadmau5 has already made a quick impact on the dance music community.

deadmau5 has a very distinctive style of music, even including remixes. Often, on compilations such as Ministry Of Sound, the tracks are longer than the regular track length of four minutes (an exception being his remix of "The Longest Road" by Morgan Page, which is slightly less); a good thing too, because his music is reasonably repetitive and hypnotic. One of his most recent hits "Not Exactly" is one of the better ones: at first listen, five minutes seem to last four hours, then, when one gets used to the music, five minutes seem to last three minutes. I exaggerate slightly for the sake of explaining just how good it feels to be almost hypnotised by this music.

But I digress.

deadmau5 has released (as of this writeup) four albums, one each year from 2005 onwards. He has released a large number of singles and EPs, and remixed tracks from artists old (Energy 52) and new (Luciana), crossing the trance (Hybrid) and house (Lützenkirchen) genres, among many others. I am in awe of this guy. Seriously. I love it.