Loco Dice
Biografie
Every so often a DJ or producer comes along who inspires the collective imagination. If you’ve seen Loco Dice perform at his ten-year-long Tribehouse residency in his hometown Düsseldorf, or at DC-10 in Ibiza (from ’02-’06), you will have clicked to this.
Loco Dice is someone who can puzzle together intangible moods with a direct approach. Via his DJ sets or his productions on labels like M_nus, Cadenza, Ovum, Four Twenty and Cocoon, he merges perspectives in his delicate sense for sounds and reflective atmospheres, underpinned with solid, physical grooves inspired by the hip hop that was his early sonic stomping ground in the mid- to late ‘90s. There’s something there for the dreamers, as well as for the 9-to-5ers who just want to lose everything in a moment of abandon on the dancefloor.
Don’t think that merging of perspectives is accidental. This Loco Dice, with his mercurial temperament, may let his thoughts run away with him, but he tends to chase those ideas and make them into an artistic reality. His DJ sets, whether at Germany’s biggest rave Timewarp, Cocoon in Ibiza or a beach party in South America, are spontaneous orchestrations fueled by the nuances of a night/venue/crowd. He began a fruitful studio partnership with Martin Buttrich in 2002 leading to tracks like Phatt Dope Shit, Menina Brasiliera, and Seeing Through Shadows, and these productions are meticulously planned by Dice. It’s a directorial, cinematic outlook, which permeates Dice’s everyday life, and comes not just from the outlandish escapades and scrapes that he has sometimes found himself living out in real life. It also stems from elaborate film scripts imagined as a young Loco Dice on the streets of Flingern in Düsseldorf and the Kerkennah Islands in Tunisia. This continues to be a habit of Loco Dice’s today: to close his eyes for just one minute, and see a whole cornucopia of scenes and atmospheres. As one manifestation of this, visitors to Düsseldorf early this year will be able to see an exhibition of photographs taken by Loco Dice & Martin Buttrich during the year they spent in New York City to work on the Loco Dice album. It’s an album that re-imagines the soul of a city, built from careful observations of urban tribes that crisscross and sometimes clash, of minute details and sensory impressions.
Family is important to Loco Dice, as you might have noticed if you’ve seen one of his tattoos, a Chicano-style artwork with the legend “Guadelupe”. His love for music stems from hearing soul and funk in the kitchen, and holidays with his mother to Tunisia, where he absorbed North African and Middle Eastern folk music and occasionally sneaked away to watch his grandfather playing dice at café tables on the street. Family is how he’s always regarded the people close to him, and it’s how he regards subcultures too. A football player, he’s inspired by those who build strong teams of creative people around them. This sense of family is what he wants to create with projects like his and Buttrich’s label Desolat, and an artist management agency he run with Tom Preuss called Artist Alife. When you visit the office of Desolat and Artist Alife, you’re struck by the fact that everyone seems to come from a different cultural background. Loco Dice’s experience of Germany is one that includes friends and collaborators who are of African, Eastern European, Italian or Turkish descent. Loco Dice is interested in all kinds of people and artistic subcultures: he’s proud of people who bring a creative flair to what they do, informed by lives lived ever so slightly less ordinary.
Loco Dice is someone who can puzzle together intangible moods with a direct approach. Via his DJ sets or his productions on labels like M_nus, Cadenza, Ovum, Four Twenty and Cocoon, he merges perspectives in his delicate sense for sounds and reflective atmospheres, underpinned with solid, physical grooves inspired by the hip hop that was his early sonic stomping ground in the mid- to late ‘90s. There’s something there for the dreamers, as well as for the 9-to-5ers who just want to lose everything in a moment of abandon on the dancefloor.
Don’t think that merging of perspectives is accidental. This Loco Dice, with his mercurial temperament, may let his thoughts run away with him, but he tends to chase those ideas and make them into an artistic reality. His DJ sets, whether at Germany’s biggest rave Timewarp, Cocoon in Ibiza or a beach party in South America, are spontaneous orchestrations fueled by the nuances of a night/venue/crowd. He began a fruitful studio partnership with Martin Buttrich in 2002 leading to tracks like Phatt Dope Shit, Menina Brasiliera, and Seeing Through Shadows, and these productions are meticulously planned by Dice. It’s a directorial, cinematic outlook, which permeates Dice’s everyday life, and comes not just from the outlandish escapades and scrapes that he has sometimes found himself living out in real life. It also stems from elaborate film scripts imagined as a young Loco Dice on the streets of Flingern in Düsseldorf and the Kerkennah Islands in Tunisia. This continues to be a habit of Loco Dice’s today: to close his eyes for just one minute, and see a whole cornucopia of scenes and atmospheres. As one manifestation of this, visitors to Düsseldorf early this year will be able to see an exhibition of photographs taken by Loco Dice & Martin Buttrich during the year they spent in New York City to work on the Loco Dice album. It’s an album that re-imagines the soul of a city, built from careful observations of urban tribes that crisscross and sometimes clash, of minute details and sensory impressions.
Family is important to Loco Dice, as you might have noticed if you’ve seen one of his tattoos, a Chicano-style artwork with the legend “Guadelupe”. His love for music stems from hearing soul and funk in the kitchen, and holidays with his mother to Tunisia, where he absorbed North African and Middle Eastern folk music and occasionally sneaked away to watch his grandfather playing dice at café tables on the street. Family is how he’s always regarded the people close to him, and it’s how he regards subcultures too. A football player, he’s inspired by those who build strong teams of creative people around them. This sense of family is what he wants to create with projects like his and Buttrich’s label Desolat, and an artist management agency he run with Tom Preuss called Artist Alife. When you visit the office of Desolat and Artist Alife, you’re struck by the fact that everyone seems to come from a different cultural background. Loco Dice’s experience of Germany is one that includes friends and collaborators who are of African, Eastern European, Italian or Turkish descent. Loco Dice is interested in all kinds of people and artistic subcultures: he’s proud of people who bring a creative flair to what they do, informed by lives lived ever so slightly less ordinary.
Evenementen in het verleden
- 30-01-2016 Awakenings Eindhoven - Eindhoven
- 25-11-2015 Loco Dice/ Caleb Calloway - New York City
- 14-11-2015 Fabric 14.11 w/ Loco Dice, Poi - London
- 18-10-2015 HYTE ADE x USED + ABUSED #ADE1 - Amsterdam
- 17-10-2015 WHP presents Loco Dice, Maya J - Manchester
- 16-09-2015 HYTE - Ibiza
- 29-08-2015 Voltt Loves Summer Festival 20 - Amsterdam
- 26-08-2015 HYTE - Ibiza
- 20-08-2015 Sonus Festival - Day 5 - Novalja
- 19-08-2015 Sonus Festival - Day 4 - Novalja
- 18-08-2015 Sonus Festival - Day 3 - Novalja
- 17-08-2015 Sonus Festival - Day 2 - Novalja
- 16-08-2015 Sonus Festival - Day 1 - Novalja
- 12-08-2015 HYTE - Ibiza
- 05-08-2015 HYTE - Ibiza
- 22-07-2015 HYTE - Ibiza
- 11-07-2015 Balaton Sound - Day 4 - Zamrdi
- 04-07-2015 Love Family Park 20th edition - Mainz
- 01-07-2015 HYTE - Ibiza
- 27-06-2015 Awakenings Festival 2015 - Day - Spaarnwoude
- 26-06-2015 15 Years w/ Loco Dice & Rdhd - N
- 21-06-2015 EDC Week - Back to back set w/ - Las Vegas
- 17-06-2015 HYTE - Ibiza
- 30-05-2015 We Are FSTVL 2015 - Day 1 - Essex
- 23-05-2015 Ibiza 2015 at Pacchetti Low Co - Ibiza
- 17-05-2015 Loco Dice, Tobi Neumann, Caban - Paris
- 16-05-2015 Toffler Festival 2015 - Rotterdam
- 08-05-2015 Electric Friday - Offenbach
- 30-04-2015 Finest Thursday / Revolting - Berlin
- 30-04-2015 Mayday - Berlin
- 27-04-2015 Loveland Van Oranje - Amsterdam
- 18-04-2015 Coachella 2015 weekend 2 - Day - Indio
- 11-04-2015 Coachella 2015 weekend 1 - Day - Indio
- 05-04-2015 Time Warp Germany 2015 - Mannheim
- 29-03-2015 Ultra Music Festival 2015 - Da - Miami
- 28-03-2015 Ultra Music Festival 2015 - Da - Miami
- 27-03-2015 Ultra Music Festival 2015 - Da - Miami
- 15-03-2015 Goaultrabeat presents: Loco Di - Rome
- 17-10-2013 Loco Dice & Friends #ADE2013 - Amsterdam
- 28-09-2013 The Social Festival - Maidstone
- 26-09-2013 Loco Dice Presents Used + Abus - Ibiza
- 24-09-2013 Carl Cox Closing Party - Ibiza
- 19-09-2013 Loco Dice Presents Used + Abus - Ibiza
- 19-09-2013 ENTER. - Ibiza
- 31-08-2013 Voltt Loves Summer Festival 20 - Amsterdam
- 25-08-2013 Creamfields - Warrington
- 24-08-2013 Sonus Festival - Novalja
- 23-08-2013 Sonus Festival - Novalja
- 22-08-2013 Sonus Festival - Novalja
- 21-08-2013 Sonus Festival - Novalja
- 26-07-2013 Tomorrowland - Boom
- 03-07-2013 Hideout Festival 2013 - Novalja
- 29-06-2013 Awakenings Festival 2013 - Halfweg
- 08-05-2013 Fade In Festival - Brussel
- 08-05-2013 Fuse & Time Warp present: FADE - Brussel
- 28-04-2013 Kiesgrube - Neuss
- 28-04-2013 Welcome to Utopia - Neuss
- 06-04-2013 Time Warp - Mannheim
- 25-01-2013 Desolat - Amsterdam
- 19-10-2012 Richie Hawtin Presents Enter - Amsterdam
- 19-10-2012 ADE - Awakenings: Richie Hawti - Amsterdam
- 01-10-2012 Cocoon Closing Party - 4
- 29-09-2012 Time Warp Italy - 28
- 10-09-2012 Cocoon - 4
- 02-09-2012 Green & Blue - 10 Years - Obertshausen
- 26-08-2012 Creamfields 2012 - Warrington
- 25-08-2012 Mysteryland - Haarlemmermeer
- 19-08-2012 Kiesgrube - Neuss
- 13-08-2012 Cocoon - 4
- 10-08-2012 Sonne, Mond & Sterne - Saalburg
- 30-07-2012 Cocoon - 4
- 21-07-2012 Monegros Desert Festival 2012 - Ctra de Barcelona
- 16-07-2012 Cocoon - 4
- 02-07-2012 Cocoon - 4
- 18-06-2012 Cocoon - 4
- 31-03-2012 Time Warp - Mannheim
- 23-03-2012 Ultra Music Festival - Day 1 - Miami
- 22-01-2012 Under 300 - Amsterdam
- 21-01-2012 Under 300 Tour - Rotterdam
- 10-12-2011 Time Warp Holland - Den Bosch
- 22-10-2011 ADE - Desolat - Amsterdam
- 20-09-2011 Carl Cox Closing Party - Eivissa
- 12-09-2011 Cocoon - 4
- 02-09-2011 Electric Zoo - New York
- 26-08-2011 Cocoon Closing Party - 4
- 15-08-2011 Cocoon - 4
- 01-08-2011 Cocoon - 4
- 24-07-2011 Tomorrowland - Boom
- 23-07-2011 Monegros Desert Festival - Ctra de Barcelona
- 18-07-2011 Cocoon - 4
- 15-07-2011 Melt - Day 1 - Gräfenhainichen
- 04-07-2011 Cocoon - 4
- 04-12-2010 Time Warp Holland - Amsterdam
- 06-11-2010 Fly BerMuDa - Berlijn