Wow, this thing’s a decade old already! When I first got into music journalism, I started by covering electronic music, then known as techno. Also, by its varied subcategories rave, ambient, darkwave, trip-hop, trance and chill, the latter still being a thing with a pop modification of what it used to be. Now the whole enchilada falls under the all-encompassing, more mainstream term EDM, as in electronic dance music.

That being said, I was a techno junkie back in the Nineties and did my fair share of raving and grinding in my old life. Somehow, Canadian electro hipster Deadmau5 eluded my radar for a long time. I became aware of him at the same time as Marshmello, two vogue electronic artists wearing zany headwear behind the turntables. I warmed up to Deadmau5, since he began to evolve and explore.

I’ll stop there, since you can probably scroll way back and find my spiel on Deadmau5 from an old Video Jukebox post. This mindlessly addictive hip shaker, “Petting Zoo,” was a bonus track from the While(1<2) album from 2014. Assuming you bought the Best Buy special edition when they still bothered sponsoring, much less stocking CDs.

All the years my son has held us hostage watching his video games, it was Goat Simulator when I actually pulled my slackened legs up horizontally toward my butt and dialed in once the boyo scooched his natty, leaping, butting, flopping and crashing goat avatar up an elevator to a rooftop house party. DJ’d by none other than a CGI animated Deadmau5, making his appearance, pumping a fist and leading a zombie-like set of dancing clones pumping along to “Petting Zoo.” My kid would get slightly miffed when I’d ask him to go get a drink or a snack so I could stupidly groove to this cut. He caught on quickly, but being a good son (and smart, since he figured on how to keep me there watching), he would always make time to drop into the Deadmau5 zone and give me my fix.

It’s just a goofy, thumping neo-disco spool I couldn’t get enough of, even on a purposefully numbing repetitive loop. When I saw the “Petting Zoo” added version of While(1<2) available at Ebay for a decent price that’s been marked up triple since I got it, I didn’t hesitate. I was already enough of a fan of Joel Thomas Zimmerman to sink the funds and complete his catalog. Ba-boop-boop, ba-boop-boop, ba-boop-boop, ba-boop-ba-baaaaaa…

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.