It's easy to want to dismiss Deadmau5 as a flash-in-the-pan on the electronic scene. Deadmau5, also known by his human moniker of Joel Zimmerman, has had a fairly quick rise to prominence - with some successful remixes under his belt for the likes of Daft Punk and Hybrid - and his affinity for performing live with an oversized mouse head as a costume just smacks of gimmick. But then you hear the tracks and you just start to get sucked in.

The interesting thing about Deadmau5 is that you're not quite sure where to peg his style. It's certainly not because he's experimental or on the vanguard of anything heretofore unheard. In fact, it's eerily close to quite a few sub-genres, but doesn't quite seem comfortable aligning itself too closely with any of them; and you get the feeling that he likes it that way. At times it's underground minimal techno, other times progressive house, every now and then a splash of trance or IDM, and then perhaps more than a casual nod over to some janky tech-house... But underneath it all is a bedrock of consistency that makes it all seem less like a globetrotting tour of the electronic 'verse and more of a steady, measured hand of egalitarian ambassadorship.

Because of this, his debut release, Random Album Title, plays more like a DJ set and less like an artist album. And I mean that in the best possible sense. With a DJ set (or a good one, at least) the DJ is not limited by his own bag of material, but can pull from anything in order to create a cohesive sound experience. Artist albums, especially mixed ones, can sometimes suffer from just sounding a bit forced. They want to flow, but they're hampered by the limited selection of tracks they happened to complete in the studio. Random Album Title sounds like it was engineered the other way around, or maybe even upside down.

"Sometimes Things Get, Whatever." Indeed. A fitting title to lead the record, as often the less explanation the better. An electronic voice narrates over choppy beats, as the record builds from a gradual swell of simplicity up to something more... well, complicated. The more tribal prog-house pulse of tracks like "Complications" to the neuvo-trance of "Slip" all work together to build the energy up, bit by bit.