Deadmau5 and Kiesza are both longstanding dance music royalty, and these these artists of distinction have finally joined forces for their first collaboration.
Released Tuesday, “Bridged by a Lightwave” is a driving, spatial epic that evokes deadmau5’s late 2000s essentials like “I Remember” and “Faxing Berlin.” The new song is built around haunting, delicate vocals from Kiesza that float over walls of sleek, deeply layered hyper-speed synth from deadmau5. The song made its debut in early 2020 during deadmau5’s cubev3 shows in New York and Philadelphia.
“deadmau5 and I used to endlessly run into one another at festivals and always talked about working together one day,” Kiesza says in a statement. ” I think we talked about it for at least four years before we actually finally got down to business. I have Joel’s beautiful wife Kelly to thank for holding us both to our word. She has always been a huge supporter of my music and never let us off the hook for committing to work.”
With deadmau5’s wife championing the collab, the producer born Joel Zimmerman eventually sent Kiesza a track to write over. The fellow Canadian artist says she wasn’t proud of the initial ideas she came up with and “being a big fan of Joel,” was committed to giving him something she was truly stoked on. Then, inspiration struck one night when she was en route to Norway from the UK and her taxi hit a massive traffic jam.
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“We were at a standstill for almost an hour before we began inching toward the airport,” Kiesza continues. “But as I was sitting there peering out the window, like magic, all of a sudden the entire song just appeared. I pulled out my phone as fast I could to capture the words and they flew in. It was as if someone was threading the song into my mind from another dimension. By the time I finally arrived at airport, my flight had long departed, but ‘Bridged By A Lightwave’ had landed in this ‘3D place.’”
Now, this bit of collaborative magic is available to the world in three forms: a radio edit, a nine-minute extended version and a more downtempo alternative mix. Listen to the “Bridged by a Lightwave” radio edit below.