A Western Michigan native and long-time Detroit resident, Lee Curtiss has been forging his unique, avant-garde and primal brand of deep and twisted dance music since the late 1990’s. A constantly changing and ever-eager student of his craft, Lee’s finger has been pressed on the pulse of underground dance music for a decade, and his production skills and intricate and carefully crafted live PA and DJ sets have garnered the attention of techno and house music’s elite.
Growing up between the two poles of Chicago and Detroit organized Lee’s approach to production and DJing, both of which place him squarely between the grooving, house sounds of Chicago and the dark sounds of Detroit and later Berlin. In his most recent production Lee attempts to push beyond the boundaries of minimal, even beyond the boundaries of the current flux of house, in order to create tracks that blend the depth and soul of the most forward thinking dance music with his own style of heavily syncopated, polyrhythmic percussion and deep, insistent basslines. The result is music that is both emotionally delicate and physically strong, as organic as it is metallic—and as appropriate for the dancefloor as for any proper afterhours. Lee’s work utilizes elements that remind one of the enthusiasm and sense of possibility that marked all the high points of the US house scene while keeping the dark roots of Detroit alive. One might say that Lee is helping to invent the genre of psychedelic house—but Lee’s interest in continually developing his art is so strong that one suspects that as soon as any such classification suggests itself, Lee is working to move beyond it, redefining the increasingly porous border between the worlds of dance music.
