Techno Tuesday: Dubfire waxes poetic on techno
Techno Tuesday is a feature on Dancing Astronaut documenting the culture of underground dance music. We’ll bring you exclusive interviews, tracks, and narratives from artists within the techno, tech house, and deep house world in an effort to shed light on some of the best talent outside the world of mainstream dance music.
For techno fans, Dubfire needs little introduction. The Iranian-American producer is the definition of an underground heavyweight. He’s a constant fixture at world-class festivals like Time Warp and BPM, and his productions — from “Exit” to his recent remix of Plastikman — never fail to elicit an emphatic response.
Aside from being a house and techno stalwart, Ali Shirazinia — as his real name goes — is also a Grammy-award winning producer for his work with Sharam as Deep Dish. In fact, Ali and Sharam first started the project back in 1991 — long before the name Dubfire ever crept onto afterhours dance floors. It wasn’t until 2007 that Ali established his label SCI + TEC and began formally releasing his solo music under the guise of Dubfire.
With an artist as celebrated as Dubfire, we thought it would be interesting for him to share how he got into techno:
The word “techno,” to me, has always been synonymous with technology and innovation; both on a mechanical, as well as on a creative level. Techno music – and its plethora of unique artists – exemplifies these core values through emotive, genre-bending music and performance.
Every since I can remember I was always drawn to alternative, non-mainstream music. I think that it had a lot to do with the fact that I was very shy and introverted when I first came to the USA and pretty much right thru my teens. Not having a good grasp on the language or being a popular kid in school kept me out of those mainstream circles and pushed me in the opposite direction; towards the cooler, artsy, left field cliques. I felt comfortable there and it certainly helped me find my unique voice and ultimately, my sound within the realm of techno.
I had always played in bands as a teenager and through the discovery of pioneering early electronic music, I became fascinated by the possibilities that these developing technologies afforded the creative mind. Techno music soon became the dominant movement in my life. – Dubfire
More recently, Ali Shirazinia has launched his brand new live show: ‘dubfire:live HYBRID,’ merging elements of 2D and 3D visuals with his cutting edge performance style:
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