Interview SHARAM One half of US remix legends Deep Dish, Sharam Tayebi, talks his solo work and the journey that led there

With Deep Dish on an extended hiatus, Sharam Tayebi has been busy with his solo career, taking inspiration from three iconic cities for his latest remix project

When Sharam Tayebi started work on his recent single, The Rain, he immediately knew that one version of the song was not going to be enough.

“The original song had a kind of New York vibe,” he explains, “but as I was mixing down, I started to imagine all these other different remixes. I could hear Detroit basslines and catchy London melodies. At first, I started looking around for some remix names, but then I thought, ‘I’m already beginning to build these different versions in my head… why don’t I do the remixes myself’.”

The result is three very distinct and delicately balanced takes on The Rain, each one tipping its hat to cities that have played a part in Tayebi’s musical history – New York, Detroit and London.

Tayebi is, of course, instantly recognisable as one-half of the Iranian-born/Washington

DC-based duo, Deep Dish – both Tayebi and his DD partner, Ali ‘Dubfire’ Shirazinia, were born in Tehran and later moved to the US. The Deep

Dish remix CV is extensive, featuring everyone from Madonna and Dido to David Guetta and Depeche Mode. The Madonna remix was Grammy-nominated; the Dido remix was a Grammy-winner. And let’s not forget the massive 1995 remix of De’Lacy’s Hideaway, which recently charted in Mixmag’s Top 30 Best Vocal House Anthems Ever.

They didn’t do too bad with their own tunes, either. The Future Of The Future (Stay Gold), Flash Dance and Say Hello all charted in the US and UK. The first of those singles came from their 1998 debut album, Junk Science, which, over 20 years later, still sounds like nothing else out there. Experimental, yet catchy. Beautiful club tunes sitting next to jazz-tinged appeals for

religious tolerance. Ambience and drum ’n’ bassesque breaks. At a time when dance albums often played it safe – the singles and some songs that sound like the singles – Junk Science painted a brave, broad brush stroke that swept across the whole club spectrum.

It may well have been this scattergun approach to music that caused Tayebi and Ali Shirazinia to take a break in 2006. Shirazinia was digging deep into the sound of techno, but Tayebi’s tastes were still tenaciously diverse.

They have reunited for occasional releases and DJ shows, but Tayebi is now a fully-fledged solo artist, releasing a ton of singles – including the 2006 UK Top 10 single, P.A.T.T. (Party All The

Time) – and albums. His Essential Mix was also voted the best of 2009.

On his days off, he’s spent 2019 touring everywhere you can think of, running the Yoshitoshi label from his Washington DC office… and talking to Computer Music!

: The three-remix idea seems to have gone down well. And it probably saved a few quid! Were you ever worried that you might be too close to the song to start deconstructing and reconstructing it?

ST: “Actually, it was completely the opposite. As soon as I started work on the first version – the New York mix – my mind was going off in all kinds of different directions. I was hearing dubstep and drum ’n’ bass. I was hearing a European bassline.

“That vocal is definitely the star of the show, but you know what it’s like when you’re building a track. You drop something out and, then suddenly, you can imagine it being played in a dark room in some techno club. A basement version. Decorated by just a few red lights. With the vocal as the centrepiece, you’ve got something that keeps it all together, but you can start looking at a whole bunch of other ingredients. And you can try to take the song to different audiences. You can prevent the song being shoved into just one pigeonhole

“After a while, the three different mixes seemed to drive each other along. As I was working on the London mix, it gave me new ideas for the New York mix. So, I go back and tweak that. As I’m tweaking New York, it throws up an idea for the Detroit bassline. The minute that you first start looking at a song from a different angle, you automatically come up with new ideas.”

: Was there any reason why you chose those three particular cities?

ST: “One of the first club records I ever bought was Luv Dancin’ by The Underground Solution, which was Roger Sanchez. A New York song and one that really opened my mind in terms of what house music was. I’d never heard anything like it. I remember standing in the record shop thinking, ‘What the fuck is this?’

“Detroit has been there forever. And by Detroit, I don’t just mean straight, sci-fi techno. That’s more of a European thing. For me, Detroit is soul-driven. For me, the Detroit sound includes songs like I’m Your Brother by Round One. It has a relentless bass groove, with that simple techno modulation over the top and a constant vocal. There’s no crazy, robot breakdown. This is not machine music. Don’t get me wrong here. I ain’t got nothing against it. I totally appreciate what Richie Hawtin is doing and I think that Jeff Mills is a superman, but I have always preferred the Kevin Sanderson and Carl Craig side of Detroit.

“Maybe my whole idea of Detroit is different to what everybody else hears. At one point, I pulled in some Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley snares, which gave it a dash of Chicago, but the underlying feel was Detroit. Always Detroit.”

: The London mix is the one that sounds the most… melodic.

ST: “That’s what London is. New York and

Detroit, it’s soul and bass, but London is all about melody. That’s what I remember hearing when I first came over to London. Brothers in Rhythm, M People, Underworld… great, great melodies. You can hear it now in CamelPhat and Eric

Prydz. I don’t want to call it progressive house. It’s a UK-driven sound. A more accessible sound. And I think the London mix is the one that people will pick up on.”

: You spent most of your childhood in preand post-revolutionary Iran. What music were you listening to?

ST: “After the revolution, it was very difficult to get hold of any music. It wasn’t like there were people checking up on every household, but music wasn’t allowed and, if you were caught, you’d be in trouble. Music was underground in the very truest sense.

“But I honestly don’t think it’s possible to keep people separated from music in that way. The human race has been gravitating towards music since ancient times. Fascinated by the sound of the voice… mesmerised by rhythm. It’s in our DNA and, even though I wasn’t supposed to listen to music, I couldn’t help it. The first things I came across were my older brother and sister’s cassette tapes. Bands like Boney M and Abba. I seem to remember that there was a BBC station we could pick up on the radio and they used to do this 30-minute music show every week.

“Then, there was a major breakthrough. I somehow managed to get my hands on a bootleg Betamax MTV tape. Two hours of music videos! I’m hearing – and seeing – Queen and Elton John. Scenes from the movie, Flashdance. Music was a precious commodity, but it was also something that me and my friends would share with each other. So, I decided to try and make some audio copies of the Betamax tape. In a strange way, that was my start in audio engineering. Figuring out which wires I needed to connect where; getting the levels right. It made me feel like I was part of the music.”

: And you moved to the US at 14?

ST: “Well, my family spent six months in Turkey, which gave me access to a lot more music. And then we got to the US and, wow, there’s a whole fucking ocean of music. When music is restricted, it takes on a very special quality. For me, music was freedom. Then, when you suddenly have access to music, you kind of go crazy. I was listening to everything. Wham!, Paul Young, all that 80s stuff. I can still remember the first time I heard Paul Young’s album, No Parlez. A whole record with just his music. It really blew my mind.

“A couple of years later, I discovered vinyl record shops and started listening to a lot of Italo-disco and hi-energy. European stuff like

Fun Fun and C.C Catch. I even bought a couple of Kylie Minogue records. This stuff wasn’t being

played on mainstream radio in the US, so it felt kinda cool listening to it. But then I heard house music… Roger Sanchez, DJ Pierre, a lot of tunes from the UK. Ha ha! I had discovered the true meaning of happiness!”

: Did Washington have a sound?

ST: “You had the Go Go scene, a lot of hip-hop. House music from New York and Baltimore. All kinds of music from Europe. It was a real mishmash and I kinda liked that. Probably my favourite DJ was Reggie Wilson. He used to play a full set of Italo/hi-energy stuff until 1am, then have a five-minute break, followed by a house set till 5am. All the different sounds under one roof and everybody loving it.” : No wonder Deep Dish ended up sounding like they did.

ST: “Absolutely. Everything under one roof. That became the model for my DJ career and then my producing career. It’s never changed. So, when Ali decided to pursue the techno sounds, I decided to carry on doing my thing… trying to steer clear of the pigeonholes. It’s hard sometimes, because you end up being misunderstood. People still come up to me and say, ‘Why don’t you make another song like

Party All The Time?’ That was 12 years ago, and I’ve made about 300 records since then.”

: What’s your studio setup today? Presumably, there have been a few changes since the Deep Dish days.

ST: “Are you kidding! Completely different. I am now inside the computer and it’s the most comfortable way of working for me. Yes, there’s a studio, too – actually, I’ve got two, one at the office and one at home – but most of the production work gets done on planes and in hotel rooms. I love the idea that I’m sitting in the back of a taxi and I get an idea… bang, it’s down.

“There are a few bits of hardware in the main office studio – I still have my old Virus, a Juno-6, a Novation Bass Station – but if I ever use them, I record straight into the computer. That way, even if I’m thousands of miles away, I still have the sound. I don’t need the keyboard with me. To be honest, the hardware is playing a smaller

and smaller part as time goes on. Everything I need is onboard. Why do I want to make life difficult for myself?”

: Is Ableton the main DAW?

ST:“Mainly Ableton with a bit of Logic. In the early, early days, we started out using Cubase, but then we switched over to Logic and ended up staying there for many years. The sound is amazing and it still gets used on a few projects, but 90% of everything is now in Ableton. It seems to go hand-in-hand with the idea of a studio on the move. For me, everything is about speed… getting a rough outline of a song as quickly as possible.”

: And almost all of the music comes from your plugins.

ST: “Yeah, plugins and samples. Like everybody else, I kinda went overboard in the early days… buying every plugin synth that was out there. In reality, you never get the chance to find out what they can all do. You’re just sitting there, fermenting for a week. Messing around with sounds and not getting any actual work done.

“After a while, you start to narrow it down and I found myself spending lots of time in u-he land. Bazille, Diva, Repro 5, Zebra. Arturia, too. The Prophet, Juno and Jupiter all sound great. And there’s the Buchla. Damn, that’s a crazy synth! Half the time, I have no idea what it’s doing or what I’m doing, but it makes some fantastic, fucked-up sounds.

“If I’m having a Buchla session, I just hit record and mess around for an hour. You have to record there and then – you’ll never be able to recreate that sound again! Those moments when you go, ‘Woah, what happened there? What did I touch?’ A lot of that will end up as little effects. Bits of sound and noise that decorate the mix.

“And Serum, of course. I really don’t think I could live without Serum at the moment.”

: Did you end up using more or less the same set of tools on each version of the single or were they all treated as separate projects?

ST: “All the different mixes started overlapping at times, so I got confused about what was used on what mix.

“Serum was all over New York… the Arturia Mini V provided the bassline for Detroit. Drumwise, everything was brand-new. Whole new set of sounds for each mix. Mainly samples, taken from records that I love. I did pull up a couple of sample packs, too, but I only ever used individual hits. I don’t like using the whole loop.

“On the production side, things were a bit more evened out. The Waves API 2500 was on the master channel for each one. It works… why mess with it? And the u-he Presswerk. If I was ever having trouble with a sound, I would immediately reach for it. It just seems to give things more presence and colour. It makes the sound come alive.”

: This isn’t a Deep Dish interview, but it wouldn’t feel right not asking what you and Ali are up to.

ST: “There are one or two special DJ gigs linedup. The BPM Festival in Costa Rica in January. We’re also working on our back catalogue, getting the whole digital side of things up and running. At the moment, you can only get a couple of the albums on Spotify, but we’re hoping to get everything else up there.

“In the studio, there is an album’s worth of ideas and material, but we just haven’t had the time to sit down and work on it. With Deep Dish, you have to juggle three careers… Ali’s solo thing, my solo thing and Deep Dish. Maybe next year, we’ll make a start. Maybe!” Sharam’s single, The Rain feat. Bengle, is out now on Yoshitoshi