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MAJORIMPACT

2008

THE NEW

PRINCE OF

DARKNESS

Dubfi re

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“To say that I’m having a

blast is an understatement!

I feel like I did when I was 18

again.” Ali

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blast is an understatement!

I feel like I did when I was 18

MAJORIMPACT

2008

In the stylish understated splendour of Amsterdam’s Dylan Hotel, DJmag fi nds itself seeking shelter from the relentless rain and bitter cold of the canal-side streets.

We’re here to meet one of dance music’s most enigmatic producers — a fi gure who in just nine months has become one of the hottest properties in the realm of techno. Dubfi re, aka Ali Shirazinia, has taken a hiatus from his highly successful Deep Dish project alongside Sharam Tayebi. Now focusing on his own solo productions, he’s stunned all and sundry in the dance music community with a new sonic identity of grinding, technoid intensity. In a stylistic volte-face, he’s fl ipped the script and created a concoction which, if anything, is even more innovative — and several shades darker — than anything he’s ever done before.

It’s a mystery how the DJ/producer from Washington DC was able to so completely command dancefl oors last year with his jet-black, polished-chrome techno. It’s as if he’s emerged, fully-formed, as an android Death’s-head moth from a bright house music chrysalis, where many may have expected a progressive house butterfl y in the tradition of Deep Dish. The dark rhythmic tension and unexpected head-twisting sonics of his two club behemoths ‘RibCage’ and Roadkill’ came slamming into our consciousness last summer; two very different but utterly underground, eviscerating techno cuts, they harnessed the latest studio technology and blew holes in many of the world’s sturdiest speakerboxes. With everyone from Sven Väth to David Guetta and Armin Van Buuren rinsing ‘em out, Dubfi re’s uncompromising sound seemed to have another indefi nable quality: universal dancefl oor appeal.

‘RibCage’, which fi rst surfaced on Loco Dice and Martin Buttrich’s Desolat label, is all buoyant bass bumps and chattering, ascending synth strangeness, adorned by

the clicks and scrapes beloved of the minimal massive but employing a razor-sharp, bleeding-edge technical wizardry and an originality that makes it entirely Dubfi re. One minute, the ascending groove becomes a vertiginous cliff-face, the room spinning from the weird direction of the music; the next, we’re clamped into the beat as the track begins its second phase, the rhythm starts swinging and the acidic bass growls with ever more malevolence. ‘Roadkill’ is a different kettle of fi sh, with searing electroid robo-crunch and fi erce bass waves breaking on the track as it builds and builds. Both bespeak a producer at the top of his game, and when Dubfi re appears to meet us in the hotel bar, in a thick wool jumper, his previously long hair cut short, he’s garrulous and amiable — a streamlined Shirazinia indeed.Tonight he’s booked to rock Amsterdam’s sleek Panama venue with a four-hour set, and — clearly adrenalised and looking ahead to later in the evening — the DJ/producer talks excitedly about the new possibilities his new solo venture has opened up.“To say that I’m having a blast is an understatement! I mean, I just feel like I did when I was 18 again. With the kind of response I’ve been getting from my DJing and producing, it’s just been overwhelming,” Shirazinia smiles.

SnowballBut even he’s surprised by the props that both ‘RibCage’ and ‘Roadkill’ have been getting from DJs beyond his current fi eld.“It’s been amazing. It all started at the Winter Music Conference last March when I started giving out ‘RibCage’ and ‘Roadkill’. Some of my techno producer friends who I gave it to, it didn’t really hit them initially. But after a few months in Ibiza it started to snowball, and I was telling everybody, ‘You’re late on this, I did it a long time ago!’” Shirazinia grins. “I had everyone from David Guetta to Tiësto playing ‘Roadkill’, it really surprised me, but I think those are the best kinds of

tracks, those that appeal to a wide genre of DJs.” With such an unequivocally rapturous reception to his new direction, he’s been able to really indulge his present obsession, deep minimal techno, which he’s immersed himself in completely.

First announcing a new direction with the ‘Global Underground: Tai Pei’ mix compilation, which featured cuts from Booka Shade, Nitzer Ebb, Samuel L. Sessions and Carl Craig, it was becoming apparent that Dubfi re’s interests were taking on a much darker hue. Featuring one of the fi rst Dubfi re solo productions, a cover of obscure ‘80s indie rockers Love & Rockets’ ‘I Feel Speed’, Shirazinia was paying tribute to the love of grimy rock that consumed his teens. ‘I Feel Speed’ also features one of his fi rst vocal performances — his fi rst since fl exing his pipes on Deep Dish’s second album ‘George Is On’. This tentative musical direction, it turns out, was to be a hint of what was to come: the fi rst germinations of a fully formed darker style that was growing in his mind, signposting the way forward.

“‘I Feel Speed’ was something that I did about two years ago,” he explains. “I was at a crossroads of where I wanted to go as a solo artist. Deep Dish was winding down. So I did that track, it was something I always wanted to do. And I also wanted to showcase my voice a little bit — on ‘George Is On’ I did it on a small ballad. “It was sort of an experiment in sound and the things that I wanted to get off my chest. I wanted to do the vocal thing more at the time, but now my focus is the electronic, instrumental stuff. My head is in a different place right now.”

OtherwordlyThis different place beats to the pulse of a new kind of techno, the Dubfi re sonic signature. It’s possessed of a minimal, slow grind, panoramic in scope, and with a subtlety and dark dimension designed to test the best club systems — to put the

Since taking a

break from Deep

Dish, Ali ‘Dubfi re’

Shirazinia has

gone back to his

roots and taken

the underground

by storm. With a

slew of incredible

original solo

productions and

remixes, not to

mention some key

DJ slots, he’s been

welcomed into

the techno fold

with open arms.

DJmag hails the

new Prince of

Darkness…

wor

ds: B

EN M

URP

HY p

ics:

CHR

IS D

AVIS

ON

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MAJORIMPACT

2008

Funktion Ones through their paces. Technologically cutting-edge, the crisp, otherworldly sounds employed by Shirazinia and engineer Matt Nordstrom push their state-of-the-art studio to the limit, using a stripped-back set up, but the best equipment available.“Everything I’ve been doing has been out of my own studio, and my co-pilot Matt and I set out to have a really stark set-up, but to have the best of the little gear that we have. I do so many dates where I get to test this stuff out, and I want to make myself sound as good as I can on a club soundsystem, that’s always in the back of my mind. I want to make dancefl oors blow up — blow up some soundsystems,” Shirazinia chuckles.

With such a successful integration within the techno pantheon, one question that may be on the lips of Deep Dish fans is why he’s gone in such a different direction, stepping away from the duo and musical partnership that he’s championed for 15 years alongside Sharam Tayebi. “The feeling was defi nitely mutual. We’ve been together for 15-plus years, not only as partners in Deep Dish but as friends. We would spend more time together, literally, than we did with our families. The time felt right to go in separate directions. “Deep Dish has always been a shared vision and there’s always compromises that you have to make within a shared

vision. We ended up getting into a lot of arguments over the years about the direction we wanted to go musically. It was all of those reasons combined that led to us agreeing amicably that it was time for us to explore some other avenues,” Shirazinia reasons. Stepping away from the more commercial vibe of his previous project, he’s found a completely new life with Dubfi re, re-invigorated in the knowledge that he’s able to focus on what’s really turning him on — pure unadulterated dancefl oor music, material designed to make bodies move.“I sort of wanted to take it back to grass-roots level, take it back to that point where I started many years ago,” Shirazinia enthuses. “I wanted to make things for the dancefl oor, to evoke certain feelings on the dancefl oor. To not care about how it sounds in a car, or on CD.” In this light, he’s completely uninterested in making a Dubfi re album, seeing them as redundant within dance music.“I don’t think albums are where it’s at. I’ve had an allergic reaction to the old way of doing albums. The mix CDs you do for the fans, and also to look back on what you were playing at a certain point in time, so I enjoy doing those. But anything for the charts, aimed at commercial recognition? When you’re making tracks for the dancefl oor, artist albums make no sense.”

DarkerIn the short time since ‘Roadkill’ and ‘RibCage’ began to work their insidious magic, Dubfi re’s sound has already evolved and mutated into a darker new form. Reconnecting with old DJ pal Richie Hawtin, Dubfi re has just become part of the M-nus family, and his fi rst productions for the esteemed über-minimal imprint are already stepping beyond his considerable innovations, heading into uncharted depths. ‘Emissions’, a new cut unleashed as part of new M-nus compilation ‘Expansion/Contraction’, is a stark bleeping builder, evoking a dark, industrial interzone — a

nightworld where clouds of steam emit from huge machines, clanking and creating the rhythm. Even more astonishing is Dubfi re’s remix of Hawtin’s early classic techno track ‘Spastik’ as Plastikman: an overhaul that brings the original’s eerie, ultra-dense drum track bang up-to-date, again echoing the factory sounds that he’s presently exploring. With the original considered an unimpeachable classic in some quarters, and fi ercely defended by tech geeks, Shirazinia has already been catching fl ak for daring to reinterpret it, but he’s far from bothered.“That’s sort of divided people, and all I did was beef up the original, made it easier to play out,” he says. “I gave it to Richie and he said he wanted to release it, so I feel like I paid the original the respect that it deserves. But some people still say the original should never have been tampered with. Who cares? One day we’ll all be six-feet deep in the ground and none of it will matter!” Shirazinia cackles, demonically.

By remixing the Plastikman classic, Dubfi re has stepped up and claimed his place at the techno table, and with his new sound, he’s bringing the new beat, EBM and industrial music that turned him on in the past kicking and screaming into the future. He’s revisiting his musical roots, experimenting with manipulating noise in the same way that his favourite industrial bands like Einsturzende Neubauten once did.“Some of the German stuff that’s inspiring me, the really sort of out-there, underground stuff, like Marcel Dettmann, is not that much different to me to Einsturzende Neubauten, it’s more cutting-edge. In that sense, they’re both cut from the same cloth. I can defi nitely

* UNKLE‘Hold My Hand (Dubfi re Remix)’ The warping, electronic fi lth of this mix takes the Oliver Huntemann blueprint and mutates it into a brand new form.

* System 7‘Space Bird (Dubfi re Remix)’ In which Shirazinia employs his episodic remix method and takes us on an epic journey into the dusk and beyond.

* Smith & Selway ‘Transit Time (Dubfi re Remix)’The druggy sample “What time’s your fl ight?” is complemented here by a massive, bleepy production that projects the original into the stratosphere.

’Fire BombsThree sick remixes from the house of Dubfi re...

Dubfi re

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“I had everyone

from David Guetta

to Tiësto playing

‘Roadkill’, it really

surprised me.”

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MAJORIMPACT

2008see myself exploring that industrial vibe more in 2008, there’s a couple of concepts that I’ll borrow, either samples or just tapping into the vibe.” Already tinkering in the studio with white noise and found sound, Shirazinia is all about moving forward into the pitchier, more cavernous sonic territories where other safer producers fear to tread.

IbizaOne of the most important factors in Dubfi re’s new-found artistic freedom has been his recent immersion in Ibiza’s party culture. Hanging out at DC10, Sven Väth’s Cocoon parties, and getting down with the M-nus crew, he’s been enjoying the island more than ever, fi nding the DJs, music and lifestyle a total inspiration to his new direction. Asked about techno’s

present rule over the White Isle, Shirazinia answers somewhat cryptically. “You have great clubs there and then you have the drug culture. Fortunately or unfortunately, whether you do drugs or not, it’s part of the culture, as was drug culture in the ‘60s part of that movement. It’s an important part of electronic music, especially techno. It’s an important part of Ibiza, which is the epicentre of electronic music and the sound to come, and what’s gonna happen tomorrow.” For him, getting in amongst the action is an essential part of DJing — in order to connect with your crowd, you have to be one of them, partying it up to the full.“You have to party with the crowd, be in amongst the clubbers at

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