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George Bush was president. The United States was poised to engage in a war--the Simpsons-esque Operation Desert Storm--that ranks just behind the Falkland Islands skirmish and Reagan's Grenada invasion in frivolity and ridiculousness. In retrospect, the year 1990 wasn't the type of climate to yield a giddy dance-floor anthem and upbeat international hit. But somehow, three stylishly offbeat émigrés in New York managed to make the whole world dance and sing along to an electronically powered tune called "Groove Is in the Heart." Hardly as poignant a political statement as "The Times They Are a-Changin'," it sold millions and made Deee-Lite a near-household (band) name. "We just thought our friends were going to like the album, but not many other people," Super DJ Dmitry recalls of Deee-Lite's 1990 debut, World Clique. "It kind of worked out otherwise." Well, it did and it didn't. Dmitry, Lady Miss Kier and Towa Tei achieved worldwide stardom, but the trio faded quickly. By the time Deee-Lite released its third album in 1994, fans who once so fervently took to the dance floor at the signature song's pounding thud of an intro seemed resigned to wait for it to reappear on a Hits of the '90s compilation. Deee-Lite wouldn't even receive the recognition it arguably deserves as a progenitor of electronica, or at least as the band that rekindled America's interest in dance music for the first time since the last "Disco Sucks" decal was ironed on. But that's all in the past for Dmitry, who has reemerged in the late '90s as an in-demand underground DJ (if you can assign such status to a man who regularly spins records for thousands at dance clubs in New York City, Berlin and London). He's also actively at work on projects that he hopes will establish him as an even more serious artist. Born and raised in Soviet-era Russia, where he studied classical piano and composition, Dmitry came to the United States in 1979, the member of a refugee family that settled in New York. "I was 15 when I moved to the U.S.," he says from his Manhattan apartment. "It was Hell's Night, the night before Halloween, and I remember taking a walk after we dropped our things at a hotel in Brooklyn. All the streets were empty except for kids who were throwing rotten eggs and setting fires. It was like: 'Here's your welcome to America.'" But the States, it turned out, had more to offer young Dmitry than pungent poultry products and pyromaniacs. Discovered at a friend's party in Manhattan in the late '80s, he signed on as DJ at various downtown clubs, soon hooking up with Lady Miss Kier and Towa Tei to form Deee-Lite. After the three went their separate ways in 1995, Dmitry began to parlay his past association into a more low-key career as a club DJ. Essentially, to paraphrase a famous dance song, he had gotten right back to where he started from. Yet the musical landscape had changed while he was prancing around behind Kier in Technicolor MTV clips; the sounds now emanating from his turntables pivot off the sonic developments of the past half-decade--house, techno, drum 'n' bass, breakbeat and electro. He's clearly excited about the progress. "Technology has made it possible for people to make their own music in their homes or in small studios," he says. "It's democratized the making of music, so it's opened doors for humanity. That's why there's a shift in thinking, because now we can do things we could only dream about before. The tools are here." Reverting to the keyboards of his youth, albeit ones run through the circuits and wires of a synthesizer, Dmitry has begun collaborating again. A few years back, he teamed with his friend DJ Silver and Twin Peaks chanteuse Julee Cruise to record "Artificial World," a track for the Scream soundtrack. The three recently completed an album of songs he describes as "ethereal," with a mix of heavy beats and morbid ballads, or as he puts it, "modern torch songs." It sounds like a decidedly downcast turn for a DJ equated with one of the most joyful--if shallow--party tunes of the decade, but once again, the times are a-changin'. "My music is definitely darker," he says. "It reflects the time. The first years of the '90s, it was all new and exciting, and the possibilities were endless. It's still like that, but we're also living with so much media overkill, with pollution and industrial waste and disease and hunger. The initial euphoria has worn off. Now we just have things to do." |
