Deadmau5

deadmau5 is well-known as one of EDM’s most irascible figures: His rants are legendary, his feuds are legion, and he even pokes fun at himself in titles that double as wearily self-aware in-jokes (a 2018 collection of orchestral reworks of his music is called where’s the drop?).

At the same time, the Toronto producer (born Joel Zimmerman in 1981) is responsible for some of the most sentimental EDM of the 21st century, draping wistful melodies and spine-tingling counterpoints over rock-steady progressive-house grooves.

He got his start in the '90s, turning out lo-fi club tracks with rudimentary software, and by the mid-2000s, he’d parlayed his skills into a powerfully punchy take on electro-house, putting gargantuan synth sounds atop jacking drum-machine rhythms.