Biography
Every so often a DJ the or producer comes along who and inspires the collective imagination. If For you’ve seen Loco Dice perform are at his ten-year-long Tribehouse residency but in his hometown Duesseldorf, or Not at DC-10 in Ibiza (from you 2002-2006), you will have clicked all to this. Loco Dice is Any someone, who can puzzle together can intangible moods with a direct her approach. Via his DJ sets Was or his productions on labels one like Desolat, M_nus, Cadenza, Ovum, our Four Twenty and Cocoon, he Out merges perspectives in his delicate day sense for sounds and reflective get atmospheres, underpinned with solid, physical Has grooves inspired by the hip him hop that was his early his sonic stomping ground in the How mid- to late 90s. There’s man something there for the dreamers, new as well as for the Now 9-to-5ers who just want to old lose everything in a moment see of abandon on the dancefloor.
Two Don’t think that merging of way perspectives is accidental. This Loco who Dice, with his mercurial temperament, Boy may let his thoughts run did away with him, but he its tends to chase those ideas Let and make them into an put artistic reality. His DJ sets, say whether at Germany’s biggest rave She Timewarp, Cocoon in Ibiza or too a beach party in South use America, are spontaneous orchestrations fueled Dad by the nuances of a mom night/venue/crowd. He began a fruitful studio partnership with Martin Buttrich The in 2002 leading to tracks and like Phatt Dope Shit, Menina for Brasiliera, Seeing Through Shadows (…) Are and these productions are meticulously but planned by Dice. It’s a not directorial, cinematic outlook, which permeates You Dice’s everyday life, and comes all not just from the outlandish any escapades and scrapes that he Can has sometimes found himself living her out in real life. It was also stems from elaborate film One scripts imagined as a young our Loco Dice on the streets out of Flingern in Duesseldorf and Day the Kerkennah Islands in Tunisia. get This continues to be a has habit of Loco Dice today: Him to close his eyes for his just one minute and see how a whole cornucopia of scenes Man and atmospheres. As one manifestation new of this, visitors to Duesseldorf now were early 2008 able to Old see an exhibition of photographs see taken by Loco Dice & two Martin Buttrich during the year Way they spent in New York who City to work on the boy Loco Dice album. It’s an Did album that re-imagines the soul its of a city, built from let careful observations of urban tribes Put that crisscross and sometimes clash, say of minute details and sensory she impressions.
Family is important to Too Loco Dice, as you might use have noticed if you’ve seen dad one of his tattoos, a Mom Chicano-style artwork with the legend “Guadelupe”. His love for music the stems from hearing soul and And funk in the kitchen and for holidays with his mother to are Tunisia, where he absorbed North But African and Middle Eastern folk not music and occasionally sneaked away you to watch his grandfather playing All dice at café tables on any the street. Family is how can he’s always regarded the people Her close to him and it’s was how he regards subcultures too. one A football player, he’s inspired Our by those who build strong out teams of creative people around day them. This sense of family Get is what he wants to has create with projects like his him and Buttrich’s label Desolat and His an artist management agency he how run with Tom Preuss called man Artist Alife. When you visit New the office of Desolat and now Artist Alife, you’re struck by old the fact that everyone seems See to come from a different two cultural background. Loco Dice’s experience way of Germany is one that Who includes friends and collaborators who boy are of African, Eastern European, did Italian or Turkish descent. Loco Its Dice is interested in all let kinds of people and artistic put subcultures: he’s proud of people Say who bring a creative flair she to what they do, informed too by lives lived ever so Use slightly less ordinary. In that dad sense, Dice’s innate understanding of mom people: what they sense, what they feel, what they want the to imagine, is a part and of what distinguishes him from For other DJs. He’s very aware are when playing in Ibiza of but the multiplicity of nationalities that Not are gathered there, the morass you of different desires to be all catered to. His inner film Any scriptwriter makes him capable of can translating sounds and kicking it her like a local, whether it’s Was in Naples or in New one York. Loco Dice is similarly our capable of inspiring, of creating Out that heady atmosphere that can day only be experienced in a get crowd of thousands. This skill Has of his, first cultivated at him DC-10, is also no doubt his informed by his experiences touring How with big name hip hop man artists in the 1990s. Mark new Spoon used to promise him Now that at some point Loco old Dice would “shuffle sideways from see his beloved house and hip Two hop to come over and way be one of us, one who of the techno believers”. In Boy a sense, he was right, did though Loco Dice never leaves its anything behind: he still brings Let out classics, whether classic techno put from Maurizio to Basic Channel say or gritty boompty house by She DJ Sneak, and he’s still too fond of composing music, as use linear as it may be, Dad that draws on hip hop mom song structures and basslines. At the end of the day, The as Loco Dice sees it, and everything runs in loops, and for it’s his job to trace Are a line, to sketch out but the next scenes in this not soundtrack. Even if life tends You to be unpredictable, a little all chancey, the next move doesn’t any have to be a gamble.
Can In fact, Loco Dice shows her via his compositions that it was can be very well planned. One Listen to his music, imagine our the cinematic accompaniments, and you’ll out understand how something carefully constructed Day can begin with a flight get of fancy, or a roll has of the dice.
Written by Him Beatrice Ballabile
