Deadmau5 plays the EMU Convocation Center on Monday

photo by Drew Ressler

Chances are good DeadMau5 is not a household name. But to those who follow club music, the Grammy-nominated house/techno artist is a big deal indeed.

DeadMau5 (pronounced "dead mouse") brings his music mixing skills to Eastern Michigan University’s Convocation Center Monday evening.

“I think he’s the biggest they come in terms of that music,” said University of Michigan student Adam Lynn, who put the show together via his own production company, Social Studyz.

For the event, the venue will transform into an approximation of a nightclub, with an area for dancing.

“There’s a very large floor, which is very close to sold out, that’s going to have a dance/club feel,” Lynn explained. “(DeadMau5) has done shows in that kind of venue before, and it will be good for all the spectators too. He brings a light and video show with him. It’s going to be a pretty substantial light show going on. He brings a lot in terms of a production.”

DeadMau5 — given name Joel Thomas Zimmerman — has a sound that combines house, trance and electro. He was named "Producer of the Year" in 2007 by DJ magazine, placed No. 6 in DJ magazines' Top 100 poll and is the most awarded DJ/producer of the Beatport Music Awards. Those who watched the recent Video Music Awards on MTV may have seen his mixing skills, as he was DJ for the event.

Deadmau5 performing live in Los Angeles at the MTV VMAs last month:

The name DeadMau5 came about after Zimmerman found a dead mouse in his computer one day while mixing songs. When he talked to people in chat-rooms, or so the story goes, he became known as "that dead mouse guy." Shortened eventually to DeadMau5, Zimmerman often performs in an enormous mouse costume, complete with strobe-light eyes.

Although it might be easy to think to him as a DJ, Zimmerman doesn’t really like the term, likening his sets to live performances. The Toronto-based 28-year-old plays mostly his own material, assembling tracks on the fly, using cutting edge computer technology, including software he’s helped write himself.

“There are no CDs involved,” he said in comments on his Web site. “It’s a technological orgy up there and I try and keep it more my music than anyone else’s. If people come out to see Deadmau5 I want them to hear Deadmau5 music.”

Over the last 3 years, Deadmau5 has released a string of club hits, starting with the trance-house hybrid “Faxing Berlin” in 2006. It was followed by “Ghosts N Stuff” and the single “I Remember,” a collaboration with producer Kaskade.

His Grammy nomination came last year for his remix of "The Longest Road," by Morgan Page, in the category Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical. The Deadmau5 album “For Lack Of A Better Name,” which brings together the best of his single releases, came out in 2009.

Lynn credits one of his partners, Logan Light, a DJ on the U-M campus and DeadMau5 fan, for bringing the act to his attention. Light, who has seen DeadMau5 live, said his performance is memorable for several reasons.

“His setup is by far the most complicated that I have ever seen. He’ll break down the song into everything from single drums to single bass notes, and based on (selections) he’s pushing, he triggers them at certain times, so he’s almost playing a song through buttons, and using other knobs on these 5 controllers he has set up in front of him to filter sounds — delay, echo any kind of standard music effect. It’s an interesting way to perform. One man can play seven instruments in an electronic kind of orchestra. It’s his way of, with the computer, replicating that.”

Most of DeadMaus5’s music is original, Light added.

“I’ve probably been to over 1,000 concerts in my life and this is easily one of the coolest visual things I have ever seen.”

Roger LeLievre is a freelance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com.