Thursday, 09 July 2009 04:37

Despite all the hard work, it seems that Deep Dish just can't get enough of their busy lifestyle. By remixing songs, to accepting the highest musical honor - a Grammy - it's obvious that their hard work has paid off. Even the successful release of Global Underground's 'Moscow' is just a slice of this 'Deep Dish' pie.

Over the last couple of months this energetic duo has been slaving in the studio for the much-anticipated follow up to 'Moscow' - Global Underground: 'Toronto'. Ali 'Dubfire' Shirazinia recently traveled to San Diego, California, dropping some tunes at Club Montage. Sharam Tayebi wasn't able to make it to the show; constrained to the finishing touches of 'Toronto'. During his set, Ali seemed to be fighting with the set up at the club, but eventually managed to rock the crowd with some deep and dirty tracks, shifting gears with the track 'Let's Get Ill' and concluding the set with a dance rendition of Coldplay's piano-banging tune 'Clocks'.

Amidst the preparation of their upcoming summer tour, the closure of their Yoshitoshi shop in D.C., and relentless studio work, Sharam took some time out of his busy schedule to talk to Xpander about the new album, working and partying with P. Diddy, music and his thoughts about current issues in the Middle East...

Well we missed you in San Diego lately...
Yeah, we had to do some last minute recalls, well not really recalls, but we had a lot of problems with labels not clearing tracks. We got notice that four of the tracks didn't clear, so I stayed back making some replacements. I made the replacements, but that following Monday they come back and say, "You know what? We're clearing the tracks". So basically all that work for nothing. I was very happy with results, but they have a manufacturing deadline so they're sticking with the original production.

So what are your thoughts about the new album?
All of our compilations are a reflection on what we're playing out and not just one night. It's what we play a few months after a few months before the actual compilation. We did the party [Toronto] in December 2002, but we did a section of the stuff we had played during the summer, last fall and some stuff we're still playing. It's like a mix match of everything. It is like if you were to put a time line of everything from a year ago up to now, and we try to put that all into a compilation. Every compilation is like that. So basically it's the best of our sets in a year, put into a compilation.

And in comparison to 'Moscow' did you take a different approach with 'Toronto', and did you feel the pressure due to the success of 'Moscow'?
'Moscow' was surprisingly successful. We didn't expect it to be that successful. And of course, everyone expects another 'Moscow', but we don't like to repeat ourselves. Once we go down a certain avenue we don't like to go back there again. With this album we tried to take a different approach and do some things different that we haven't done before. You know we have done the 'Yoshiesque' compilation and the 'Renaissance' compilation. Each one of them is different. A lot of people expects us to repeat ourselves if they like something, but we purposely go out of our way not to repeat it. So we try to make it different by trying new things. So it's basically a reflection of where our head is at and the stuff we are playing currently. And the movement that has been making us more excited about music has been this movement back towards the housey stuff. So this is sort of reflection of that, and this is the stuff we play. We don't necessarily follow trends, but the records that we play have more of that feeling.

You mentioned 'Yoshiesque' and 'Renaissance', can we expect a Yoshiesque 3, or any future compilation?
Yeah, we are definitely going to do a Yoshiesque 3. We don't know when yet, but probably some time next year.

Out of curiosity, why Yoshiesque?
We got this title from a word that Chris Kneads of Update 7 used when referring to some Yoshitoshi material. He was making reference to the 'yoshiesque' songs on compilation of ours, although not every song was a Yoshitoshi song.

So what are your thoughts on the re-release of 'Penetrate Deeper'?
Yeah, it's one of the most sought records that we have. The label that put it out obviously went bankrupt and the label that took over sort of neglected it, so we were able to get the rights back. That's when we decided to re-release it. We are going to get that out in September. We're pretty excited about it because we have been getting so many calls and e-mails by people asking that they want 'Penetrate Deeper'. It's extremely surprising, especially now that people can download music now days. So it's hard to believe that there would be that type of demand out there. We have been in this business for such a long time so we have had different types of fans through out our careers. And the people that bought our recent compilation didn't know about 'Penetrate Deeper', so we're sort of re-introducing something we did back then.

That was back in 1995, right?
Yeah.

Is it not amazing how much music has changed and developed over the years?
Well, you'd be surprised how much it hasn't changed. It's like fashion, but dance music hasn't been around that long, well, the format that we know it as. It has been around for a little over ten years now, or house music if you want to call it something. A lot of the old stuff is coming back again. It's like fashion, it goes through it's own different variations at different times.

A good example of variation is Break-Beats. It seems like many DJs today are mixing in break-beats. Do you find yourself using a lot more Break-Beats today?
On the individual CDs you can kind of see us going there a little bit (chuckles). We're fans of music. We don't discriminate any format. I think it's childish and moronic to discriminate against music because of its genre. I think people need to pay attention more to the quality rather than how a magazine categorizes it. If there's a breaks song we like, we'll play it. If there's a rock song we'll play it. We played Coldplay's 'Clocks' song the week after it came out. This song is a great song to play out because it lends itself to the club environment.

So it's safe to say that music is evolving?
Music is constantly evolving. I think it's really up to DJs and producers to evolve this music. If people take on a purist attitude then music is going to die. The reason some styles surface more than others is because they are being played more by open-minded DJs and producers.

You were recently in Miami at the Winter Music Conference, how did that go?
It was fantastic!

You were spotted hanging out with P. Diddy, how was that and are than any exciting stories to tell us?
Well what can I say? He's P. Diddy. We rolled with him to a few places. Basically, we were going club to club, handing records to different people and he came along with us. It was interesting to see how excited he was about dance music. It reminded me when I was first introduced to house music back in '88 and '89. I was so excited I couldn't get enough of it. I really like that fact that he was into it. He kept on asking questions, "What's this? What do you call that?" he was very inquisitive. He didn't seem like he wanted to come in and cash in on dance music. Plus, it's not like dance music is something to cash in on, (laughs) you know? So it's definitely got to be the love of it. You'd be surprised how much he knows about dance music and how much he inquires about it.

He sure is a smart guy.
No doubt about it. He wouldn't be where he is today if he wasn't. A lot of celebrities aren't successful right away. You have to have that talent and drive to get you there.

By the way, how did you guys come to work with him?
We did a set in December at Space in Miami and he happened to be in the club that night. Apparently he goes there a lot. We were doing our thing, playing our stuff and the next thing you know he's on the dance floor with his group. It was an amazing party, the vibe was incredible and the people were going crazy. He was jumping around more than anybody else. After a bit he came up to the booth to introduce himself. We were like "we know who you are". He told us he was working on a dance album and wanted to know if we would collaborate with him we exchanged numbers and a couple of weeks later we started bouncing ideas off.

Is that where you started working on 'Let's Get Ill'?
We basically showed his some stuff we were working on. We were particularly happy about that track, so we liked that. He had some vocals, so we asked him to send us the acapella and we'll do something with it. So we did and like it. After finishing that up we went to New York to do some additional coals and we basically made it into what it is. We finished is up the week before Miami. It turns out he was working on the same song with Darren Emerson and Nellee Hooper.

What enticed you to work on this track with P. Diddy or even with artists like Justin Timberlake, Dido or even Madonna?
The way we look at is that you don't always want to be in 5th grade. When you're in school you go from 1st to 12th, then on to college and maybe you get your PhD. You constantly want to progress. So for us, we have been doing this for a long time, so we get bored doing the same thing over and over again. So we are working with artists, especially artists that come from a different genre of music and have a different mentality and a different approach to music. This is very exciting for us. So it's more of a personal preference. We like to challenge ourselves. We get off doing something that people don't expect. People don't expect us to do N'Sync, because people don't think N'Sync is 'cool'. But then when you a make a track and you play it at a club and people go ape shit to, that's a good feeling. That's an incentive and it's even a greater feeling because it shows how people are manipulated by the media. It shows that a lot of people aren't thinking for themselves, and that they just want to be cool for the sake of being cool.

Sure, why do what you're doing if you're not challenged?
Exactly. It's like any business. In any business you don't want to do to the same thing over and over again, especially if you're in the creative field. Picasso had so many different paintings, not two of them were alike. They may follow the same patterns, they may be inspired in the same way, but they don't look the same. And we feel the same way. We don't do the same thing over and over again. We're in the fortunate position that people of that caliber come to us an say "hey, could you reinterpret our song?" Obviously we have to like it to even consider it. For everyone we do there may be 10 or 20 that we don't do. But it's fun. You only live once. You can't always be serious. Some of the remixes we do it purely fun, but we don't lower the quality we do. We still put the same amount of effort that we would put on to Iio track or any other remix.

We've definitely heard a lot of remixes coming from you guys, but a lot of fans were wondering when Deep Dish would release something original again. Would you like to comment on that?
Well, we have been working on original stuff and on some new tracks. We were hoping to release some new stuff this summer, but because of GU's problems things were pushed out, which pushed our projects out. We are days away from completing new material, even some surprises, but we've been somewhat quiet about it as well.

Can we expect to see Deep Dish pick up any residencies anywhere soon?
We currently have our Space residency in Miami 4 times out of the year, plus 1 during the WMC. Buzz (D.C.) unfortunately closed down, but the promoters are putting together and starting things up in Baltimore, like at Nation. Right now we don't have that many residencies because of all the travel. Space is the only major one.

With all this travel that the two of you are doing, do you feel things are the same way they were right after 9/11?
I think those who were greatly affected by travel are more of the travelers and business people. We are still affected by the random checks, but even at times those don't seem random. We just cope with it. It's not fair to be constantly picked out, but we just deal with it.

Finally, this may sound somewhat clich? and you've probably been asked this question a lot since you're both are from Iran, but what do you think about the current situation in Iraq and the Middle East?
Coming from Iran, the people there are automatically considered terrorists. Even though Iran didn't have anything to do with what happened on 9/11 and the people of Iran aren't even terrorists, Iran is still considered an axis of Evil. It will be some time till things go back to where they used to be. It is up to the activists to make things right, and make a difference, but it will be some time till that happens.

As for my thoughts on Iraq, I think many people believe it was wrong to invade that country. I think it was wrong to invade that country. However, I do think that getting rid of Saddam wasn't such a bad thing. We just got back from a South American tour and one of the cities we visited was Panama City. I was amazed how clean it was and how modern it was. You could sense there was a US influence there. We travel to many cities around the world and even in cities like Singapore, that are clean and modern. I think the Middle East could use that. It would also be great to see a democracy there. There are many religious fanatics, so it would be great to see a separation between church and state. That remains to be seen there, but it would nice to see that people aren't afraid of what they believe or have the opportunity and freedom to say things. Being the optimist that I am, I think it can happen.

Source: 365Mag