Deep Dish
HOUSE CATS
Club Duo Deep Dish Take the Steamy Sounds of London's Renaissance Club to Your Living Room
Deep Dish -- Ali "Dubfire" Shirazinia and Sharam Tayebi -- have built their own cottage industry of cutting-edge house music in their hometown of Washington, D.C., and it has spread throughout the world. Their label, YoshiToshi, is highly respected in the house music underground, and the pair have achieved international recognition greater than perhaps any American DJ, aside from their hero Danny Tenaglia. The duo have remixed songs by the Rolling Stones and Madonna -- their remix of her single "Music" became a global club smash -- and released one of the most critically acclaimed full albums in house music history, Junk Science. Deep Dish's latest set is Renaissance Ibiza, a double-album mix they did for the U.K. club Renaissance. Barnes & Noble.com's Bill Werde checked in with Shirazinia and Tayebi about the state of dance music in America, their favorite DJs, and working on the follow-up to Junk Science -- when they aren't too busy spinning at clubs around the globe!
Barnes & Noble.com: How and when did you two get together?
Sharam Tayebi: It was October of '92. We met through a mutual friend in D.C. We were both into club music, but from different spectrums. I was more into Euro and Hi-NRG, and Ali was more into industrial and hip-hop. Then we both discovered house on our own terms. We met and were like, "Whoa, we play the same records." Maybe different times of the night, for different reasons. I was playing records to please people; he was playing records to piss people off. [laughs]
B&N.com: Are you happy with the mix you did for Renaissance Ibiza?
ST: They asked George Lucas about Star Wars, and he's said, "I can't stand it because it's not perfect." We are so anal...we're crazy about it. This CD reflects our club sound, and the darker side of our club sound.
Ali "Dubfire" Shirazinia: With the way mix CDs are now, people expect a monotonous groove -- really underground with very little vocals. What we're trying to do is highlight songs, so you come away and remember something...an actual song you can hum or remember.
ST: Most people don't want to listen to drums for 75 minutes. Somebody might have just broken up with someone, or just met someone, or been really happy or really sad. We want to be able to communicate with that emotion.
B&N.com: Kind of like the group Journey?
AS: [laughter] [breaks into "Oh Sherry"] Not exactly. I loved Journey, though.
B&N.com: Is it different playing for the States than the U.K.?
AS: It's more challenging when we play the States. People aren't immediately up for you. You really have to work the crowd -- especially in New York and at [NYC club] Twilo. It's a lot like London -- everyone has that "you need to impress me" attitude.
B&N.com: It doesn't get frustrating that your tours and CDs do so much better in Europe than in your home country?
ST: America basically sent this music overseas and created a revolution. Now people from overseas are coming and creating a revolution here. And we're like, "Wait a minute. How come we're not part of this?" We want to represent the States, because most of the great stuff came from here, and now a lot of the great stuff is coming from overseas.
B&N.com: Who are some of your favorite DJs now?
Both: Besides Tenaglia? [laughs]
B&N.com: How about when you first got into it?
AS: Masters at Work, Todd Terry, Tony Humphries, Roger Sanchez. All the New York guys. We were raised on New York house. Danny Tenaglia, he has always been progressing, and I think today he's still ahead of everyone else. Danny has been the No. 1 influence in our DJing.
B&N.com: To what extent do you think America is becoming part of the global dance scene now?
AS: In terms of the people behind the scenes -- the promoters, the club owners, the sound and lighting guys -- they have a long way to go. In terms of the enthusiasm of the crowds? It's definitely there. Dance music is like the new punk, basically. It's here to stay. It's what kids are listening to. They're going to raves. It's what 20-somethings are doing overseas. But it seems that the scale and quality of the events -- from the graphics to the way that the clubs are put on -- the quality is noticeably better overseas.
B&N.com: Do you see dance music culture evolving in the U.S. though?
ST: It's going to happen. We had a photo shoot today, and the photographer lives and breathes dance music. We're all growing up, and we're going to dominate the whole industry. It's only ten years old. The whole rock-'n'-roll thing took a long time. It took a group like the Beatles to break it big time. Now there's Sasha & Digweed and Prodigy and Chemical Brothers.
B&N.com: Junk Science was your last self-produced album. Are you working on a follow-up?
AS: It's sort of on the back burner. We want to promote ourselves and the style of music that we're into, and fortunately or unfortunately, the gigs have gone so well that we keep getting invited back to more and more places. And it's a way to promote ourselves so that when we have an artist album, more people will be exposed to us. I would rather sit home and work on music, but you've got to do the promotion.
B&N.com: What else are you working on?
AS: We just finished a mix of Madonna's "Music." And we're following up our Yoshiesque [compilation] album with Yoshiesque Two [due in early 2001]. The first one was [tracks] we had been playing for the previous two years. This one will be another update. And we are working on our follow-up album to Junk Science. We have some tracks done, some demos. This one will probably be a bit clubbier. I don't think a lot of people got the concept of listening to dance music at home.
October 17, 2000
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