B-Side Weekly: Deadmau5 – “Not Exactly”

With his brand-new stage design as well as releasing continuous and consistent work from the year of 2002 all the way to present, Deadmau5 has a strange place in our carefully constructed social world of dance music. In a world of constant change, Joel Thomas Zimmerman has somehow kept his head above the waves and produced music that not only changes with the industry, but evolves his artistry. After his 2006 track, “Faxing Berlin,” came along an obscure gem that was the first single to be released in the year of 2007: “Not Exactly.” Unlike the more trance-house crossover of the bonafide hit, “Strobe,” Not Exactly stamps its identity into our minds by bridging the gap between those gritty techno sounds of the late 90s and early 00s, while showing us what the future could be. Without getting too sappy over the changes in the industry, “Not Exactly,” is one of the few songs to come out during the transition from “underground” to “mainstream” of the EDM world, and properly bridges the genre gap that only shares an equivalent feeling with Calvin Harris’s “Stillness In Time.”

deadmau5 – Not Exactly

Just like the track mentioned above, it truly isn’t the quality of the Deadmau5 track that states its glory: the potential that reflects the eventual growth of DeadMau5’s career documents the historical growth of the mainstream form of EDM we know today, even as an umbrella term. “Not Exactly” has a simple elegance that displays the evolution of his genre, yet also represents the quirky production value we have come to expect out of his unique brand of house. “Not Exactly” would not find chart success, but would pave the way for his “Strobelight Seduction” collaboration with Kaskade in 2008 that would reward him with a “gold” certification in album sales and produce the collaborative single, “Move For Me.”

Just like we mentioned in the last few issues of B-Side Weekly, don’t listen to Deadmau5’s “Not Exactly” for another mainstream house-smash, but instead appreciate it for how far the genre has come. While Deadmau5 may be past the era of more simplistic, techno-infused beats, “Not Exactly” is a historical testament to a genre that would gain mainstream attention in only a short amount of time; did you notice we didn’t even mention the old buzzword of yonder, “dubstep?” Yeah, Deadmau5 couldn’t even be bothered in 2007 to follow trends, and neither should you.

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