[Deee-Lite, The Very Best Of Deee-Lite Full Album Zip
Addison Mauldin
LADY MISS KIER makes a huge impression, whether it was from first seeing her dance in the music video to Deee-Lite's 1990 hit "Groove Is in the Heart," on the cover of Vogue as a style icon of the '90s, or at one of her DJ gigs in the 20 years since her band broke up in 1996. Thanks to her audacious psychedelic go-go girl aesthetic and warm disco-diva voice, her work is beloved by party people the world over.
Don't know Lady Miss Kier yet? Google MTV's Rock the Vote clip from 1992 where Deee-Lite performs "Vote, Baby, Vote" from their socially conscious album Infinity Within. It'll be the best 35 seconds of your life, especially if the following words have ever resonated with you: Julie Newmar, Ann-Margret, Parker Posey in Party Girl, mod, or house music. From her early days as a fashion design student with a love of Emilio Pucci catsuits to writing Deee-Lite-ful wonders like the great debut album World Clique to their even better final record Dewdrops in the Garden, she has been an eternal spring of positivity, optimism, and social justice. So let's talk with Lady Miss Kier, or Kier Kirby to her friends. She was enjoying a beautiful day in New York when I called.
"Most of my gigs are word of mouth," she says. "I kinda go back and forth between doing live shows with new music and then DJ gigs. I decided to take a year off from doing live shows and slow down my pace a bit and just do DJ gigs right now.
"Maybe that's why DJs are more popular now, because it's their job to go through all the crap, rubbish, to find what's consistently good. You can easily be sucked into a vortex of finding music. If you turn to certain DJs, they already went through thousands of tracks."
I told Kier that "Vote, Baby, Vote" has been stuck in my head this entire election season. "That's funny because when I wrote that... to get people interested in voting so they could vote George Bush out, it was not an endorsement for the Clintons but I was endorsing them. Once they got in, their policies quickly turned me to being more skeptical. Which is why I'm supporting Bernie, 'cause I have followed the Clintons from the very beginning," she explains. "I'm a huge Bernie fan. He's brought a lot of hope. The movement brings a lot of hope." Our interview happened weeks ago, so I'm bummed I don't get to ask her how her hope is holding up.
I also couldn't ask her about the mass shooting in Orlando that left 50 people dead at a gay nightclub last weekend. The tragedy happened in a place very much like where Kier spends her time, DJing to crowds of adoring gay audiences. So this Saturday, when she'll be enveloped by sweaty dancers reveling in Portland Pride and mourning the people who were senselessly gunned down in Florida, let Lady Miss Kier play you her message of positivity.
Kier reportedly said this during Deee-Lite's heyday, and it seems especially apt now. "We want to strengthen their spirit on the dance floor so they can diffuse the dissatisfaction from daily global destruction." These days, she promises, "We're going to go all night. Bring the most comfortable shoes you've got." I for one want to dance away this terrible sadness with her as my guide.
TE: The oldest 45" that stand out in my memory are "Dance With Me" and "Controversy." My older sister was into disco, so it was always playing in the car. I remember hearing "Turn the Beat Around" on the radio. I love the round singing, when the female vocalists start singing the rhythm.
TE: I moved out to LA two Julys ago. I couldn't have anticipated the feelings that came with it. When I first moved out there, it felt like freedom. But after a few months, I started to get isolated and really depressed. I've been a devout Christian for a long time, and a lot of my music has been indirectly about God. I went on this soul-searching journey, reworking my faith and trying to understand what I believed in. I don't want to make some complicated album that's so specific to my personal issues that no one would be able to relate to it. So that kind of stumped me. I also felt pressure to become a work machine. I've always felt this overwhelming desire to help my parents out financially, and put a lot of pressure on myself. My way of thinking was warped.
LMK: LA can easily end up being a very isolated place. You have to make a point to see people, you gotta get in your car. And if you're a studio head, you're probably used to people coming around to see you.
TE: When it comes to creativity, when you're anxious or going through something, you can't function. I never learned how to compartmentalize my feelings. Normal adults put things tidily into a mental drawer so you can go back to it. I couldn't function until I'd figured it out.
TE: Well thank you! When I was younger I definitely did channel that energy, but for some reason this particular year it was so strong. I've had years where I've only written a little bit of material. I would love to be a machine.
LMK: Take time off. I was so burned out I had to stop. I didn't really choose to but I had to. The hardest thing is to do nothing. But I I found out that when I did nothing, time slowed down so much. There were these in-between moments where I learned more than I ever learned by just staying busy. "Let's write another song, let's write another song." But what does it mean? I don't know!
TE: That was the best night of my life. That was epic, to go from an underground house music producer to being on stage at the Grammys. The best part was calling home and hearing the pride in my mother's voice. Like I said, they've seen the struggles, the good years and the bad. They never told me to get a regular job. So even though it's just an award, the Grammy is something tangible that people can cling to, you know?
TE: Or the fact that I unintentionally helped invent a sound in the UK. They still can't fully describe what I do. But a Grammy they can grasp. My father literally goes around asking everyone if they know who Daft Punk is, and he's like, "Well my son works with them." I'm like, Jesus! Dad!
TE: I got the idea for the original cut-ups from listening to MK because he was the original, so I always give him credit. I just took it into my own direction. I have to say that out of my whole career, I've had to go back and change something because they didn't like it less than ten times in twenty years.
TE: It'd probably start out really happy, then get very dark and then start to swing back into a high-note again. Like I said, I needed to grow a lot. The one thing I can say about everything I've been through is it's going to make for great songwriting. If I had started writing the album last September when I had wanted to, I don't think I would have had half the things I have to say.
TE: We're still in the beginning stages. The goal is to get a lot of live instrumentation involved. When I write songs, I am very in touch with my emotions. It's almost like I always hear a female vocal while I'm writing.
THUMP: You're waiting till now to tell me you fell in love this year? Besides, isn't that prime material for writing songs?
TE: Yes, that's what the album is going to be. I always thought that it was so clich when people write love songs but someone told me that people can relate to these songs because they all go through issues in love. You can't fake a love song. If you do, it sounds cheesy.
Our story begins like many do, with a hit of acid. It's the mid-'80s, New York, and future pop pixie Lady Miss Kier is back at her apartment with her then beau, Super DJ Dmitry. She's at her wit's end, trying to make a go of it in fashion, he's buzzing off one of his nightly eight-hour DJ sets. They wonder how they can combine his art for moving butts with her gift for melody and perfect packaging.
"It was my first and only time doing it," says Lady Miss Kier, gingerly. "I'd never even sang before, but we tripped out and wrote three songs. Deee-Lite was formed that night." After coming down, a yearlong writing session took place, amassing them over 30 tracks that they would road test at packed hip-hop and dance clubs around the city. Kier handled mic duties, and dreamt up the kaleidoscopic image for the group, while classically trained pianist Dmitry brought the music. Record digger and DJ Towa would later join the ranks, providing many of the choicest samples.
"We were really into that funky stuff, which wasn't that popular at the time in New York," says Kier. "We started incorporating that with some Kraftwerk - I used to call that 'holographic techno-soul'. The main thing was that we didn't want to fit into one category. For me, the best bands fuse at least three different genres."
"This was one of the first songs we wrote after I took an acid trip for the first time. We wrote this and a coupla other songs that night. That was the night we formed the band, based on the vibe of this song.
"Most of the parts we came up with made it to the final version, like the bassline. The intro sample came later, as did the horn stab hit. Dmitry wrote that bassline, and the piano parts and chord changes on the night, and then he programmed the drums later on as well."
"That very first version was really good. That's what I've learned over the years - don't mess with the demos too much. There's a demo version of this that's out there that actually got us the record deal. But then when it came time to do the album, we changed it a lot, I don't know why. It became less of a piano house type of track, which is what it started out as.
"Someone uploaded the original version to YouTube and I was listening to it about a year ago and was like, 'Yes! I knew it. The original version is much better' [laughs]. It never got a proper release. But if you find it, you'll see how the song evolved, I guess."
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