52 DEADMAU5

52 DEADMAU5
UP 12

Best known for:
Wearing a mouse head
From: Canada

It’s been 16 years since Joel Zimmerman hit the ground running via his debut LP, ‘Get Scraped’— and we’re beginning to think that he might want to trade in his rodent persona for a hard-charging racehorse, as he shows no signs of slowing down. In just the past 12 months, he’s released five singles ranging from the lighter-than-air ‘Bridged By A Lightwave’ to the strutting ‘When The Summer Dies’, and launched a pair of new labels, hau5trap and beathau5, the latter specialising in providing music for film, television, advertising and digital media.

That’s just the start. On the live front, Zimmerman’s been revving back into gear, first via drive-in events and, later, full-scale outdoor gigs, perhaps most notably a massive party at LA’s SoFi Stadium with Kaskade. He’s partnered with Richie Hawtin to launch the direct-to-avatar gaming venture PIXELYNX; he’s teamed with game developer Manticore to create Oberhasli, a virtual world that’s just kicked off with an in-game deadmau5 concert; he’s on the advisory board of the emerging streaming platform Audius; and almost needless to say, he’s dived headfirst into NFTs. We could keep going, but you get the idea — Zimmerman is one busy house mouse.