As noted, Arcade Fire’s Win Butler fired a couple of shots at Coachella’s first weekend, one of which dug up the well-worn accusation that electronic artists aren’t actual musicians. “Shout-out to all the bands still playing actual instruments at this festival,” the Canuck orch-rock boss said, and it seems (self-aware) EDM godhead Deadmau5 had his fur ruffled by the comment. Wednesday afternoon, he wrote on Twitter, “shit to remember: A computer is a tool, not an instrument.” It seemed perhaps he agreed with the Reflektor leader, but then the Mau5 tweeteth more:
arcade fire needs to settle down. some dudes devote their lives to instruments, others to electronic composition by cpu, dafuqs yer problem?
— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) April 23, 2014
i dont expect to see daft punk pull a steve vai on stage…i expect to listen to some decent music, n see cool robots. no problem.
— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) April 23, 2014
if i wanna watch real artists perform, id pick the opera before wasting a fucking minute of my life with arcade fire. #do youevenscorebro?
— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) April 23, 2014
but since some EDM is enjoyable to me, ill go watch them fake it, and enjoy it more than you hate the fact that they cant play guitar.
— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) April 23, 2014
inb4 some fucking hipster throws a hackeysack at me.
— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) April 23, 2014
He ended the minor rant with a vote for genuine orchestral music: “… but seriously, im just sayin… you should get out to the opera if you ever get a chance, the orchestra pit is a cespool of pure skill.” Funny though, because Butler’s other complaint that night involved Coachella’s “fake VIP room bullshit” — a topic Deadmau5 is passionate about as well, judging by his takedown of that Miami club crowd in January.
