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Seks with Deep Dish 04.12.2002 by Damon Fonooni Photos by Martynas Simokaitis
Venue: Eleven50
As Sharam stepped up to the decks, he began to really toy with the crowd, teasing them with a build up and drop off of energy. Oh, what's that? Nuskool bass lines grinding through? Beginning his descent into the rumbling low ends of perhaps a newer school of thought, Sharam dropped Akodama's "Slightly Forward" on SAW Records. And, oh my! Some nuskool break beats to accompany those bass lines? I think so! Oh-so-sick breaks and beats began bumping their way through the minds and the hips of all in attendance, even venturing to play a certain nuskool remix of Basement Jaxx that asked the simple question, "Where's Your Head At?" The answer was clear: everyone's heads were being swamped with driving rhythms and melodic hints of house music.
Throughout the night, I worked my way through the club inside and out, and everywhere I
went was packed with people. The outside area, crowned "The Aqua Lounge," was full of
socializing people needing a break from the loud music inside. A real treat was in the
My face was still sore the next day from that wide grin on my face the night before.
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With their recent successes in receiving a Grammy award for their remix of Dido's "Thank You," the
release of the twenty-first installment in the Global Underground series, which was a reflection
on their two day set at Club XIII in Moscow, and a slew of hot tracks on their Yoshitoshi imprint,
one expects the welcoming acceptance of the public and the press and therefore a magnificent
turnout to see Deep Dish play at Eleven50. And that is exactly what happened. Whether or not
the people in the audience were classic house heads, loyal Deep Dish fans, or just people out
to have a good time, there was an overflow of bodies until the last drops of music dissolved
into the early morning.
I arrived at Eleven50 just after eleven o'clock, and upon entering the club, I first noticed
that instead of using the upper balcony for a DJ booth, a stage was set up on the main dance
floor. There was also an Egyptian theme for the décor inside, complete with 16-foot high
hieroglyphic banners and draped ribbon and material across the stage. A projection screen
hung above the turntables that displayed distorted visual images of the DJ, or in this case
the DJs. It was apparent that there was a lot of thought that went into the mood and environment
that was wanted by Seks and Deep Dish themselves. Overall, I was very impressed with the
sound system setup that night, mainly because the speakers were surrounding the dance
floor and not just angled out from a single corner.
Much to my surprise (but a very welcome one), at 11:30 Deep Dish stepped up to the decks and
their audience. Ali "Dubfire" Shirazinia was first up, making a very subtle entrance with a
synth-washed, minimal house track. The volume went up, and immediately everyone began to
shuffle their feet to the pounding bass line. I cannot describe the width of the grin that
appeared on my face; I knew by the very first thump to come out of the subwoofers that this
was going to be a very pleasing night for me and for the mass of people that came out to
see the masterful DJ duo.
The first two hours or so was a journey through deep and techy house just the right formula
to get everyone grooving to the music. The gorgeous cords of X-Press 2 featuring David
Byrne's "Lazy" shone through, putting a cap on the housier end of the night. Next up was a
combination of house doused in techno formulas, but when Ali played techno, it seemed more like
house. That time of the night was just the beginning of a demonstration on how one can
change the ambiance of music within different contexts.
Venturing darker and more percussive, the duo began switching off more often and were
relentless about driving their audience to nonstop dancing. With the filtered sound of
an unreleased remix of Fingerfest Inc's "Autoporno," the vocal recorded by our very own
Gene Carbonell, all hands were in the air and all feet were rocking the ground. The
foreign spoken words of Milo's "Jungle of Mirror" were heard near the end. How is it
possible that Deep Dish kept a full house, and I mean FULL, until the very last
encore song they played? This ability and talent is what ranks Deep Dish among
the top DJs and producers internationally.
back gallery where Yoshitoshi's own Luke Flair was playing deep, soulful, house music. His
remix of Satoshi Tomiie's "Virus" was released on SAW Records not too long ago. Luke's
music reminded me of progressive house from the good ol' days when it was happy and
uplifting, not concerned with a darker mask in its melodies and harmonies. I spoke
with Luke for a moment, and he is a very kind, sincere person and rather young as
well. In our conversation I asked him about the sound problem (in the form of a low
frequency hum and feedback from the subwoofers) at the very begging of Deep Dish's
set, because I noticed that a turntable was taken from Luke's area to use up front,
postponing his set. He laughed and told me that one of them had simply flipped a
switch, resulting in a good number of people scurrying here and there to try and
remedy the problem. Nice to know that even the most talented of musicians come
with their mistake-making human counterpart, isn't it? Things like that make it seem
like perhaps, even if only for a few moments, we are all on the same level, jet-setting DJs or not.
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