There aren’t a great many artists at the top of the EDM game that I shower in praise on a regular basis, but both deadmau5 and Eric Prydz have made such staggering contributions to progressive house that I don’t consider my glowing reviews of their work to be puff pieces. As such, you might imagine my excitement upon learning of a possible collaboration between the two global icons.
In between a couple of the monthly EPs Prydz has been releasing leading up to his debut album, he also put out “Opus,” a nine-minute aural journey that even the infamously critical deadmau5 couldn’t help but love, if his Tweet to the Swede was any indication:
holy crap! nice job on Opus there errrk. thank god i can count on you for actualy music. 🙂 @ericprydz very inspiring.
— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) August 17, 2015
Prydz tweeted back: Â
.@deadmau5 thanx man 🙂 we should give in soon and make one together. Let me know when that studio is done! — Eric Prydz (@ericprydz) August 17, 2015
To which deadmau5 replied:
I shall! And not a minute before. 😉 https://t.co/FiaKM5qVSM
— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) August 17, 2015
If the amicable dialogue between deadmau5 and Prydz comes as any surprise, it helps to understand both artists’ background. When the term “progressive house” began to change from describing the slowly building, world music-influenced grooves popularized by artists like Sasha and Digweed during the ’90s to the hard kicks, hoover synths and heavy bass drops of songs by outfits such as Swedish House Mafia, both deadmau5 and Prydz were on the forefront.
However, as the genre evolved into the contrived, interchangeable anthems engineered to fill the space in front of main stages with densely packed bodies (which is often attributed to Beatport’s infamous lack of genre tags, interestingly enough), both artists kept on exploring their own more sophisticated creative tangents – and have managed to make music which continues to resonate with discerning audiences through to this day. Given their combined track record for artistic integrity, it stands to reason that whatever they put out as a joint effort will be nothing short of epoch making.
Check back for further updates on what we can only hope will be the first of many deadmau5/Eric Prydz collaborations.
