Tehran, IR · techno · tech-house

Dubfire

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Half of Deep Dish, then a second career in stripped, hypnotic techno — Grammy-winning past, minimalist present, both played with surgical precision.

Dubfire was born in Iran and moved to the United States at age seven, settling with his family near Washington, D.C. As a teenager he played guitar in school bands, absorbed hip-hop, dub and industrial records, and found Kraftwerk, Ministry, Depeche Mode and Nitzer Ebb at a local record store while following the city's punk scene, including Fugazi and Minor Threat.

In 1991 he and fellow D.C. resident Sharam Tayebi formed Deep Dish, launching with a 1995 remix of De'Lacy's "Hideaway" and running their own label, Deep Dish Records. The pair won a Grammy in 2002 for a remix of Dido's "Thank You" before splitting into separate solo careers, saying they had grown bored working the same way together.

Under the Dubfire name, Shirazinia moved toward darker and more stripped-down territory: rigid, percussive techno and tech-house built on repetition, sound design detail and long, slow-building arrangements. He sang the vocals on his own "I Feel Speed," a cover of an obscure Love & Rockets song later used in a Volkswagen advert, having also sung on Deep Dish's "In Love With a Friend."

In 2007 he launched the label SCI+TEC, opening with the electro-tech track "Roadkill" while "RibCage" became the first release on Loco Dice's Desolat imprint. Richie Hawtin signed "Emissions" to his Minus label and reworked Dubfire's version of his own "Spastik," and Sven Väth's Cocoon Records issued further material soon after.

His DJ sets favour extended mixing and a steady tightening of tension rather than obvious peaks. The work brought two entries in Resident Advisor's most-charted tracks of 2007, International DJ Magazine's Player of the Year in 2008, and mixes for Mixmag, BBC Radio 1's Essential Mix and DJ Magazine.

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