Deadmau5 Played A Rare Set as TestPilot During Electric Forest 2018
Earlier today, Deadmau5 announced his new eight-track EP that will be released on July 13th. The EP will feature his brand new collaboration with Rob Swire, a handful of remixes, and even a few new originals.
6 hours of instructions, 23 video lessons, and a downloadable course workbook.
In addition to Deadmau5’s busy lifestyle, Deadmau5 came to Electric Forest 2018 as his lesser-known alter alias TestPilot. While the crowd is significantly less busy than a Deadmau5 set, we can attribute this to a lot fewer people actually knowing about his side project.
Testpilot has been Joel Zimmerman’s outlet for straight-up techno since he first launched the alias years back, giving him a lane to dig into the harder, more stripped-down side of dance music without it getting tangled up with the Deadmau5 brand or its stage production expectations. The project has picked up real credibility in the techno world too, with releases through Richie Hawtin’s respected Minus label and appearances at festivals like Movement and Ultra, where the techno crowd tends to be a lot more discerning about who gets booked and why. Testpilot sets are rare and notoriously hard-hitting whenever they do happen, which is exactly what makes catching one in the wild feel like such a find for fans who actually track the alias.
Electric Forest ran across two separate weekends in 2018, June 21-24 and June 28-July 1, at the Double JJ Resort in Rothbury, Michigan, and this Testpilot appearance went down during the second weekend. It’s a pretty different vibe from the main Deadmau5 sets fans are used to, more warehouse techno than festival-mainstage spectacle, with none of the giant LED cube or pyro that usually comes with the Deadmau5 name, but that stripped-down approach is exactly the appeal for the people who know to look out for it.
Also Read: What is Electric Forest?
As for that new EP, mau5ville: Level 1 dropped on Mau5trap on July 13th as promised, led by “Monophobia” featuring Rob Swire, alongside tracks from Getter and GTA plus remixes from Attlas, Latroit and Rinzen. It ended up being the first entry in what turned into a whole mau5ville series of EPs that Deadmau5 kept building out over the following years, using them as a way to spotlight collaborators and rising producers alongside his own material.
Watch as Deadmau5 makes a rare appearance as TestPilot during his EForest set below.
TestPilot at Electric Forest 2018
