Lee Curtiss

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 almost 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 minimal house, in order to create tracks that blend the depth and soul of the most forward thinking house 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 new work utilizes elements that remind one of the enthusiasm and sense of possibility that marked all the high points of the US house scene: saxophone, disco loops, etc. 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, he is working to move beyond it, redefining the increasingly porous border between the worlds of dance music.In the last several years Lee’s live PA has been in increasing demand, taking him to premier European venues like Fabric (London), Rex Club (Paris), Cityfox (Zurich) and Club Dervisionaere (Berlin), while also been a regular fixture for New York’s Wolf + Lamb collective, Mutek (Montreal) and Movement Festival in Detroit.A favorite of some of the most exciting producers and Djs today, including Matt Dear, Bruno Pronsato, Magda and Jeremy Caufield (among countless others), expect years of constantly shifting and exciting music from Lee.