Deep Dish Talks Reunion and New Music: “It Was Time to Finish the Story”

Deep Dish's Sharam and Dubfire quit working together in 2007, much to the disappointment of dance-music fans around the world.

After a decade and a half, they had begun to clash. “The original split was acrimonious,” Sharam admits to New Times. And Dubfire adds, “It came to a point, creatively, where the tension that turned into magic also was causing a lot of friction.”

But early in 2014, Sharam and Dubfire, having focused on their careers as solo artists for seven years, decided to come back together to “finish the story properly,” as they put it.

So since last March, they have been mounting the return of Deep Dish, with the single "Quincy," a debut reunion show during WMC 2014, a subsequent string of long-requested DJ sets, and now their first headlining set at Ultra Music Festival in ten years.

What's next for Sharam and Dubfire? A world tour and a new full-length album. We at New Times recently spoke with the legendary house duo about the breakup, the reunion, and recording again.
New Times: What brought Deep Dish back together?
Sharam: I’m not going to lie. The original split was acrimonious. But a lot of time had passed, and we let it go, and started to forget why we were angry at each other at the beginning. While that was happening, we both went out and achieved our own solo successes. We got to thinking that we both just walked away from Deep Dish. We’d felt like we hit the end of our own creative cycle. We felt it was time to come back and finish the story and see where we could go. It was time to go back and explore our creativity together.

Dubfire: For a long time, people looked at us as one, while we looked at us as two. While we were doing the collaboration, we were still our own individual DJs, and then we would come together as one. There came a point where we really wanted to explore our own individual creativity, not only as producers but also as DJs, and have our own individual platform. We’d accomplished a lot of things you kind of want to check off. We said, let’s try something different. It came to a point, creatively, where the tension that turned into magic also was causing a lot of friction. We’d done a lot of that and wanted to go off and do our own thing. And now we’ve come back to together to tell the rest of the story.

Did you find in that time that everybody asked about Deep Dish coming back?
Sharam: Everybody, for years, was constantly asking us. We started to get a lot of offers when the EDM explosion happened in Miami. A lot of promoters had been asking us, especially when the bigger artists were getting tired and crowds had seen them. We started to get questions about one last party and getting together, and all those requests started to snowball. One big thing is I wanted to finish the story by putting together an exhaustive best-of and unreleased stuff, which turned into the album, which then became "Let's do some gigs." And last March, we kicked it off into what it is now.

Is there new music coming in the future, be it remixes or new original music from Deep Dish?
Dubfire: We have enough material for an album. We’ve got to make it all cohesive, and make it all make sense. We’ve got some collaborations we’re working on. So it’s a matter of getting it all together. We’re hoping we get it all done by the summer so that we can then get about the business of releasing the record.

Sharam: Deep Dish hasn’t felt like we did everything we wanted to or achieved everything we wanted to. We need to go back and pick up where left off, being who we are today. Maybe it’ll finish the arc or maybe it’ll be a new trajectory. With all the work we’ve done in the studio, some of it has been incredibly positive and inspiring and signalling some kind of new sound. Right now, we’re only focused on zeroing in on each of the songs we’ve been working on for the last year or so. We know we want to do an album and we want to have maximum impact with the new music.

It sounds like you guys have been able to just jump right back into everything.
Dubfire: Well, yeah, it’s not like we were in solitary confinement. We’re friends before anything else. We know each other. We hang out with each other. For me, I’m very adaptive without being too rigid about anything. After a few days of being back together, it wasn’t like it had been ten years. Now, we’re trying to figure out what we can do that we haven’t done before. What can we do as artists that can make us happy, but also to make something relevant and credible. We’re just doing what we’re capable of doing and hopefully people come along for the ride.

Last year, you chose Miami for the reunion show. And now you're back for Ultra. What is it about this town that works so well for EDM and partying?
Sharam: Miami’s great. It’s got its own set of characters, it’s own vibe. It’s great. The climate helps, for sure. It’s also the whole Latin American community. They give it kind of a spicy, electric atmosphere. A lot of us DJs love playing South America because the crowds are so enthusiastic and emotional with the music, and show it. Miami is just a great extension of that. Plus, every venue is different, every crowd is good.

Dubfire: I don’t know how it works for the residents, but as a visitor, like, you get there and really want to take your shirt off. You just want to let loose and party. Where, you go to New York and there’s a bunch of stuff to do and places to go. When it comes to Spring Break, everybody comes with that mindset for a massive party, and it’s people from all over the world, plus the conference.

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Deep Dish. As part of Ultra Music Fesival 2015. Friday to Sunday, March 27 to 29, at Bayfront Park, 301 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Tickets cost $299.95 to $449.95. Ages 18 and up. Visit ultramusicfestival.com.

Deep Dish. As part of All Gone Pete Tong Pool Party. With Pete Tong, Duke Dumont, Hot Since 82, Andhim, and others. Noon to 11 p.m. Thursday, March 26, at Surfcomber Hotel, 1717 Collins Ave., Miami Beach; 305-532-7715; surfcomber.com. Tickets cost $60 to $70 plus fees via wantickets.com. Ages 21 and up.