Review: Deadmau5 at the Festival Pier

Thirty-year-old Canadian Joel Zimmerman probably didn't start life wanting to lead a nation of techno-house fanatics to distraction. Heck, there was barely a nation of electro-fans to speak of when the Ontario-born producer began making music.

And once he strapped on a giant mouse head, adopting a new persona, things changed. He became larger than life, bigger than the catchy but minimal progressive house sounds and laser-filled shows he became known for.

Deadmau5 (pronounced dead mouse) - the wide-eared, rodent-headed producer who sold out Festival Pier on a rainy Friday night - turned into an icon, a movement-shaping artist. His comical headgear and playful but sometimes-harsh mix of IDM (intelligent dance music), dubstep and downtempo ambient music would forge an American electro-techno boom like nothing since The Prodigy's 1997 The Fat of the Land.

Deadmau5 acquired imitators and proteges like Skrillex, who's on the cover of the October Spin magazine ("The New Rave Generation"), and whose Oct. 8 show at the Electric Factory is sold out. Deadmau5 has also attracted haters who joke that all of his tracks sound alike. Mostly, though, he got fans like those who stuffed into the Festival Pier: topless, head-bobbing boys and fist-pumping girls in bikini tops wearing Glow stick mouse ears and howling song titles like "Arguru."

The night's heavy rains had nailed fans at the Pier since dusk, where they were digging Philly DJs such as Dave P. and Sammy Slice. Yet Deadmau5's megawatt laser show seemed to cease the storms and stop the soaking. Working atop a tall jagged white stage set, the skinny producer cut the humid night air like a knife with the tribal house grooves of "Complications" and the dirge-then-dance swirl of "Ghosts 'n' Stuff."

Songs like "Raise Your Weapon" toyed with the wobble of dubstep with head-rattling bass. And the horror-soundtrack synth-strings of "Animal Rights" seemed to reach into one's skull with their hypnotic tone. That dramatically entrancing vibe carried through to the end when the lights above Deadmau5's head read GAME OVER.

The show was smashing but a dance party finished by 11 p.m.? This New Rave Generation could use some Geritol.