Deep Dish in KL: DJing is Like a Psychological Game

As America's first adopted pair of Iranians, Deep Dish duo Ali 'Dubfire' Shirazinia and Sharam Taybee are perfect examples of the truly multicultural, one-nation-under-a-groove nature of today's global dance culture. Since forming Deep Dish Records in 1992, the Washington based duo have steadily transformed themselves into hugely respected ambassadors of electronic music, through their relentless hard work and attention to detail whether as DJs, remixers or producers in their own right. Despite these days being routinely labelled as deep or progressive house stalwarts, their first major breakthrough came via a stunning vocal old skool garage style remix of D'Lacy's Hideaway, which went top 3 in the UK in 1995.

DJ residencies at Ministry and several more acclaimed compilations and productions continued their upwards progression, as did the growing success of their underground house label, Yoshitoshi, which these days also operates as a thriving internet shop. They're also nowadays in heavy demand from the likes of Madonna and Versace and regularly tour the world as premier league superstar DJs (not that they'd appreciate the label). Yoshiesque 2, their follow-up to their hugely successful first comp (Yoshiesque 2) recently came out on London's React Records, some 4 years after the first one hit the streets.

Ali 'Dubfire' Shirazinia and Sharam Taybee passed through Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur (KL) last week, on the latest leg of their worldwide DJing tour. Skrufff KL correspondent Angie Ng tracked down the guys the day after the show, to discuss DJ tricks, the US club crackdown and the truth about why British people drink so much.

Skrufff (Angie Ng): How pleased are you with the response to Yoshiesque 2-
Sharam: "We just wanted to make sure that it was good and that we liked it and were happy with it, then we wouldn't be worried about whether it's better than the first one. We wanted it to stand out on its own but it had to have some sort of relevance to the original. I think we managed to achieve that and the response has been great and we're really happy with it."

Skrufff: Paul Oakenfold has now sold over 500,000 compilation albums in the US: how much does the 'crossover' strategy figure in your plans, would you do something that's deliberately radio friendly, for example-
Ali: "We're not selling quantities, we're selling quality. I think we know that we're going to achieve that level of success on our own terms…"
Sharam: "But it'll be slow."
Ali : Yes. We'll achieve it, slowly, over the long term. We don't need to ram it down peoples' throats…"

Skrufff: Did you catch his recent comments that Roger Sanchez' Another Chance was 'Daft Punk Mark 2'-
Sharam: "He just basically said what was obvious. I mean, I listened to it and I was like 'this is Daft Punk' too."
Ali: "Me too."

Sharam: "It's a beautiful song, I loved it from day one even though I thought 'OK, this sounds like Daft Punk'. But then again, every record that's out there these days sounds like something else. Roger is one of the reasons we're here today. The reason I got interested in wanting to make music was the day I bought 'Love Dancing' by Underground Solution. I still remember going home, putting the record on and I listening to it for 5 hours non-stop; every single mix, over and over again. It made me decide that this was the kind of music I wanted to make; deep soulful music. I own almost every single Roger Sanchez record ever produced. We're really good friends with him and his contributions to dance music have been unbelievable. Nobody gives him the credit because Roger has a different way about him; you know, some people might be put off by the fact that he's all about himself. But his talent basically surpasses anything that might be negative. We love him as a person and as a producer he's just absolutely unbelievable."

Skrufff: I guess you followed electro in the early 80s, did you buy New Order's Blue Monday - the wor Tags

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