ACL Review: Deadmau5

If aliens ever come for us, there’s one aspect of humanity destined to utterly confound them: the ritual where huge crowds of people gather in a field to listen to an adult man play music without instruments while donning an enormous mouse head.

That’s Deadmau5 for you. The show by famed Canadian producer Joel Thomas Zimmerman remains a bizarre phenomenon to describe, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun to experience.

The atmosphere had hit surreal by the time 8:20pm rolled around on the headlining Honda stage. Throngs of people armed with glow sticks crowded the stage front as the quiet, lullaby-gone-awry opening of “Entropy” flooded speakers. An enormous tangle of metal and lights enclosed Deadmau5 onstage and twinkled to life as “Entropy” dropped off into “Avaritia.”

Driven by a droning, pounding bass, the latter tune resonated across the crowd like a shock. People danced rabidly. Afterward, just over an hour of nonstop music total, Deadmau5 didn’t fail to work in his two biggest hits, “Ghosts N Stuff” and “Some Chords,” as well as “Blood for the Blood Goat” and the comparatively laid-back “Seeya.”

As much as people love to hate electronica for not being “real” music, Deadmau5 – returning to ACL after a triumphant Zilker Park set in 2010 – was easily where the most engaged fans were during any set at ACL on Saturday. The majority of the crowd was completely engrossed in the live experience rather than trying to preserve the moment on their phones. It was total, unabashed exuberance.