Classic Album: Deep Dish

Positiva, 2005

During the making of George Is On the relationship between the two members of Deep Dish began to unravel. For Sharam and Dubfire happier times making their acclaimed debut album Junk Science were seven years ago, a lifetime in Dance music. During that time Deep Dish had become a gigantic mainstream brand, winning a Grammy, and kick-starting the irreversible trend for Dance/Rock with monster tracks like Flashdance. The pressure was on. The spotlight blinded. The cracks began to show.

“Our relationship started to dissolve and fall apart in a number of ways,” says Ali ‘Dubfire’ Shirazinia. “Over the years Deep Dish evolved and became a mainstream act. We’re not sure how that happened or why. In some ways it was a natural evolution and in other ways it could have been Sharam, pushing me in certain ways, or our handlers and people that were working for us. I think it was a combination. It became a successful, commercial group. We started as this very modest Deep House duo.”

A sense of isolation crept in the bigger they got, and creatively they began heading in different directions, meaning that time spent in the studio together, if together at all, would often result in argument rather than music.

“We worked a lot separately on the album,” says Dubfire. “It meant our poor engineer, Matt Nordstrom, had to work around the clock, and he’d end up in the middle of it all. I’d spend days working on something then Sharam would come in, hear it, then call me going, ‘This sucks! I’m going back to the original’. That would create a chain of arguments that would last a week [ laughs].”

Perhaps the tension befitted the album, the ‘one-upmanship’ sharpening individual skills. It certainly led to career highs like the epic Dreams, bombastic Flashdance, and truly cinematic Sergio’s Theme.

“Throughout the Deep Dish story you can hear where Sharam and I are in sync and when we’re not,” says Dubfire. “It really helped that if one went off on a different tangent that wasn’t appropriate for that project, the other would step in. That happened a lot on George Is On, which made for a better album.”