Now more than ever, house music is in a state of flux. A decade on from that sepia-tinged summer of love when it all went off, the last truly exciting sound of this century is about to enter its teenage years more confused and contrary than ever before. Splintered and divided, there are now almost as many sub-genres to house as there are to dance music as a whole. Deep, progressive, handbag, speed garage, commercial, tech-house: a glance through the racks in your local store will leave you reeling.

The centre, too, has moved. What began as the sound of Chicago, New York and Detroit has become a global groove. In those cities, the politics of dancing rather than the beats are making the most noise and the innovators have headed for the hills.

Or for Washington DC. The US capital has given the world a presidential pad, the dirty funk sound of Go-Go and, now, Deep Dish. It's perhaps significant that the only house act to truly matter in 1998 is based here, far from the bitchy bickering of New York's house players. And it's perhaps doubly significant that Deep Dish's Sharam Tayebi and Ali Shirazinia are two Iranian exiles who had to wait 11 years for their American visas. When it comes to centres, Deep Dish is navigating a far-off circumference in every respect.

Naturally, the band's debut album, Junk Science, is a maverick outing. House normally delivers knockout punches in terms of individual tracks, but Deep Dish has created an album which strives to soundtrack your every mood. Junk Science is music for living which shimmers with an epic sense of purpose. It may conform to a deep house template, but there are also spaghetti western guitars, free-form drum & bass breakdowns, Persian ambience and more.

"We didn't want to make an album which sounded just like a compilation of tracks or mixes," Sharam explains. "That's what a lot of house artists do and to be honest, it's lame and it's disappointing. Because house music is a baby, a brand new form of music, there's so much you can do with it. We wanted to make something which has longevity and is something people could listen to without getting annoyed. We wanted to make an album which people could listen to in their car or while chilling in their living room. Nobody had picked up that approach before."

Few house artists can dissect their genre as caustically as the pleasantly outspoken Sharam. He knows that there's a formula to house music and he, for one, would prefer to erase it. "It's easy to make dance music," he points out. "Look in the back of the dance mags and you'll know what equipment to buy. People get the gear and they make a record that sounds like their favourite record. They don't look at it from any other angle; like, there's no thinking about getting something innovative out of it. "Most people are doing it to make a quick buck and that hurts because it's so easy. Then you have DJs who think that because they DJ they have the right to go and become producers. The market is flooded with bad records, which makes it really hard for the better records to come out and have the space and time to develop. The audience is not stupid and it wants quality."

Quality is something the Deep Dish boys have been dealing in from the start. The former shoe-salesmen's releases on Twisted and Yoshitoshi alerted the world to their beautiful fusions, but it was a remix of DeLacy's Hideaway which really stretched the parameters and gave them their first bona fide chart hit. Three years on, they're again dominating radios and dance floors with The Future Of The Future. Considering that it was originally released last year as Stay Gold without Tracey Thorn's sublime ice-queen vocals, the track has had quite a run.

Sharam agrees. "It's still on the radio over here and it was released a year and a half ago. But this is what we are trying to accomplish; this is what dance music should be all about, tracks which stand the test of time and fads. You can still listen to a Led Zeppelin track from 20 or 30 years ago, but you can't say that about the vast majority of dance records. There are a few classics that you can always play, but of the thousands which were released in the last 10 years, how many can you name that will still be played 10 years from now?"

It's a time thing. With house and music in general so caught up in what will be the next big trend, Deep Dish prefer to deal in classics. Sharam talks about making albums like "U2 or Radiohead, albums which will stand the test of time", but he also acknowledges that there are obstacles. "House hasn't got the credibility other genres have because not many house acts have got up on stage and done the things that, say, rock acts have done. We're putting live shows together to perform the album live, and that's where the appeal is. We want to be taken seriously and not regarded as just obscure artists. Too many people think that house acts can only play live as a PA - you know, a girl singing to a hit record in a nightclub and two geeks twiddling with keyboards, at best, or even just a DAT playing."

Sharam sees similar laziness in movements like speed garage. "It never developed, it just stayed at a rip-off stage, it never went anywhere. Armand (Van Helden, New York DJ and producer) has done some really creative stuff, like that Goldie remix, but no one paid any attention because it was Armand and they thought they knew what he was doing. Armand's cool because he reinvented himself at different times and he's done it well. But no matter how fresh the sound is at the beginning, the amount of bad records and bad quality tunes that are made just turn people off."

For Sharam, a Washington DC base is both a blessing and a hindrance. "There's a catch. You don't want to be alienated from what's going on in, say, New York - you want to be exposed to it, but you don't want to be immersed in it. In DC, we can still get the music but you have to search for it. It's harder than it is in, say, Europe to get hold of the music but that makes it more special.

"But the scene in DC is not very happening, it's full of cheesy DJs playing crap. We had a residency but we were fired. We actually have been fired from every single club in DC. The management didn't like us because while we'd pack the club week in, week out, their bar takings weren't as good as the nights when they had cheese. One manager wanted me to play music to get people off the dance floor. I was like `what do you want me to do, play some waltzes?' "

Being based a stone's throw from Capitol Hill reinforces Sharam's sense of isolation as an Iranian in the US. He talks about the Congress's plan to fingerprint Iranians as they enter the country. "You can understand why they're doing it, but why only Iranians? It's ridiculous, man. They think that because I'm an Iranian, I'm also a terrorist. I mean, the whole thing about America is that it's actually built around people who've come from all over the world."

Yet Deep Dish persevere and prosper, almost in spite of their surroundings. Junk Science is sure to top many shopping lists come Christmas, but there is much more to come from Sharam and Ali. "We're open-minded to ideas and to different sounds," Sharam says. "We incorporated guitar into house music and people were like, `wow, what is this?' But if you want to make this thing go further, you've got to take risks. The greatest rewards in life are got through taking risks."

Junk Science is out now on Deconstruction