Dubfire

Dubfire is the performance name of Ali Shirazinia, a US house DJ and producer from Mashhad. He is also known as one half of Deep Dish, the electronic duo that wins a Grammy Award and receives four Grammy nominations. His work sits across house, electro, techno and related electronic styles, and he is associated with the SCI + TEC Digital Audio label.

Early background

Dubfire grows up in the Washington, DC area, where he plays guitar in school bands and listens to a wide mix of music, including classic hip hop, jazz and rare groove, dub reggae, new wave and industrial music. He is shaped by the local punk scene and by Washington bands such as Fugazi and Minor Threat. He first discovers a wider range of electronic music through Yesterday And Today Records, a local record shop where members of those bands work.

Influences and musical development

At that record store, he picks up on artists and acts including Kraftwerk, Ministry, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Depeche Mode, Nitzer Ebb, Adrian Sherwood and On-U Sound, and Einsturzende Neubauten. He also absorbs the influence of Chicago industrial music and the Wax Trax! label, which leads him to the Chicago house scene and to labels such as Trax and D.J. International Records. These influences feed into his later DJ and production style, which draws on house, techno, electro and industrial sounds.

Solo work and collaborations

Dubfire works with Global Underground on Dubfire GU31 – Taipei, his first solo mix album. The two-CD set features tracks by artists including Depeche Mode, Carl Craig, Booka Shade, Extrawelt, Samuel L Session and Nitzer Ebb. It also includes his original production “I Feel Speed,” a cover of an obscure Love & Rockets song and the first recording in which he uses his own vocals.

He is also linked with Oliver Huntemann through the Dubfire & Oliver Huntemann project.