Deep Dish

Walls Come Tumbling Down ...Or they will do if Deep Dish have their way, chucking guitars, Tracey Thorn, and even breakbeats onto their sublime debut album 'Junk Science'. Going into the trash can meanwhile: The Ten Commandments Of Deep House, Washington DC's cheesy clubs, fingerprinting of Iranians and that bastard Tall Paul for ripping off their Sandy B remix Writer: Rob Fearn Photographer: Dean Chalkley

deep dish DEEP Dish are standing in the shadow of a ruined apartment block in North East Washington. The front's been unpeeled like the lid of a sardine can, exposing canary-yellow rooms and ripped wallpaper. And stretching back for miles are derelict houses, windblown car lots, liquor stores with iron bars and churches of every denomination. We're close to segregated DC's black ghetto, watching Ali 'Dubfire' Shirazinia and Sharam Tayebi playing to the camera and checking the Polaroids.
"Is this your head?" asks Sharam. "It looks like an egg." "You could stand 20 feet back and your head would be bigger," says Ali. He's already contemplating his next well-placed insult when a down-and-out black guy without front teeth appears from nowhere. "You know, this is prehistoric Hollywood," the hobo says, rocking from foot to foot. "They shot a monster movie here.

I think they had a giant hand going in. Pam Grier, Johnny Depp. The guy kept asking for more smoke and soon the whole building was covered in smoke." A homeless couple, John and Joanne, explain that the block had its 15 minutes of fame as a location for the film Mars Attacks. Just then, a guy with a beard, which looks as if things are living in it, emerges clutching a blanket, followed by a well-scrubbed man in a suit carrying a pressed white shirt. He's on his way to work. "There's probably 20 or 30 people living here," says Ali.

deep dish WASHINGTON DC is a strange place - tourist hell meets murder capital - and Deep Dish are giving us the grand tour. "At least here we have some good areas," says Sharam. "Detroit is ALL fucked up." The pair live here in relative isolation from what they call "the politics" of New York: the bitching and backslapping of the US house scene. Both 27, Ali and Sharam are outsiders, but open-minded ones, and they're about to show up those tired producers repeating the same moves. Deep house is just the starting point for their debut album 'Junk Science', a record that's epic in every sense of the word - shimmering, sublime, spun-out, opening up new frontiers with gravely, Jesus And Mary Chain-style vocals, Wild West guitars, Middle-Eastern ambience and junglistic meltdowns. "There's no rulebook for us," agrees Ali. "Some people act like we have to abide by the Ten Commandments of deep house." "Thou shalt not use guitars," adds Sharam.

Deep Dish continue