The deal includes both original material as well as compilations, said Thrive publicist Marcy Bulkeley. Deep Dish is the duo of Ali "Dubfire" Shirazinia and Sharam Tayebi, who won a Grammy Award in 2002 for Remix of the Year for their work on Dido's "Thank You."
Deep Dish's as-yet-untitled album will be preceded in January by the commercial U.S. release of the single "Flashdance," which has soared to international prominence after debuting at the Winter Music Conference last March. "Flashdance" recently reached at No. 3 on the U.K. singles chart and rebounds 39-38 this week. A limited vinyl release on Yoshitoshi Recordings, Deep Dish's label, followed the track's online release last summer at Apple's iTunes store.
"[The deal also] involves Yoshitoshi to an extent, as it's their label," Bulkeley said, though she could not specify the role it would play in the signing. Deep Dish were unavailable for comment.
The album is the successor to 1998's "Junk Science," which was released in the U.S. on deConstruction/Arista Records. It included the Everything but the Girl collaboration "The Future Of The Future (Stay Gold)," which reached the top of Billboard's Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart.
The signing is a coup for the Los Angeles-based Thrive, given Deep Dish's longtime prominence in house music circles and beyond. The Washington, DC-based duo snagged two Dancestar USA awards this year: Best DJ and Best Compilation for "Toronto: 025," their second contribution to the "Global Underground" series. A year before winning their Grammy in 2001, Deep Dish was nominated for Remixer of the Year, a now-defunct award.
Thrive also signed British drum & bass kingpin Roni Size earlier this year and released his current album, "Return of V," in October. Label president Ricardo Vinas has high expectations of what the signings mean for his label, he told Billboard in a Nov. 20 story.
"With these new signings, the label's wheels are shifting and turning" Vinas said in the Billboard story. "In today's industry, the possibilities are many for an independent label like Thrive."