Inside the head of Loco Dice

New DJ Technology

I never use Ableton for mix CDs or live sets. I once tried doing a mix using Ableton but afterwards it didn’t sound like Dice because the mixing was totally different to how I sound when using two turntables. It’s not the individual tracks that defines your set as it is the way that you play them, and computer mixing is boring to me.

So I always approach new technologies by taking them back to the old skool. I use Traktor, which is an amazing new tool, but I use vinyl to control it which is very old.

I guess you could say, I’m 100% behind trying to take modern technologies back to the old skool.

Now that I play using Traktor in clubs, I always try to hide my laptop. Sometimes a club’s sound engineer will say to me, ‘hey I got you a laptop stand’ but I always tell them that I want my laptop either to the left or to the right of the mixer well out of the way, not in front of my face.

I need to see the crowd, the club and the people. I hate computers in front of me because you always end up staring at them.

I use vinyl to control Traktor, because it’s how mixing should be done. I need to be able to manually manipulate beats. Sometimes I drop tracks on the second beat of a phrase deliberately because I like it to be out of sync. It sounds dirty, a little bit unexpected and it’s good to break the mould. You need that dirtiness. Sometimes when you put two records together and the hi-hats don’t come in on time it sounds amazing. That’s the beauty of mixing.

In the DJ booth, I use a guitar pedal – a wah wah pedal – for delays, a Red Sound C-Loops or Cycloops for loop control, and an Allen & Heath Xone:1D MIDI controller. The Xone:1D is perfect for me as I mix on an Allen & Heath mixer – I’ve tried other MIDI controllers - but the 1D just fits perfectly and doesn’t interrupt the flow of DJing.

The art of DJing

I’m known for my hatred of doing mix CDs or radio mixes, and always turn them down. But that’s because I find it very difficult to transport the feeling of a club set onto a CD. How can you translate the feeling of a club experience through a CD that you listen to at home? How can you give people that feeling?

For my recent NRK mix, I popped open a bottle of wine at home and browsed through my record shelves and folders looking for nice tracks (the wine is part of the process). I looked for tracks that were musically interesting, different or new. And then I thought about where I wanted to start the set, where I wanted to end, what the middle should be like and the breaks.

Then when I had found some of those records, I had to find the records to go in between, because to get from one record to another sometimes takes three.

I love to start my sets really, really deep, especially when I play longer sets of five or six hours, or in this case when I have a double CD to mix. By deep, I don’t mean boring, but I mean deep, you know? After the first record I let the beats roll and try to feel the vibe.

Sometimes it goes hypnotic and vibey, and then other times it gets chunky. After a few records, the direction becomes clear and then I think ‘Ok, this is the deep CD, this is the chunky CD’.

One of my favorite things to do is to mix two records together and then at the same time add a third track on top but filter out everything except the hi hats or a vocal. Often these days, I’ll receive promos that aren’t quite right but they will still have a beat or a great vocal that can be used, and Traktor is great for that, because you can play three or four loops at once.

It’s like my friend Richie Hawtin always says, you can create something new by taking lots of little loops and mixing them together.

It’s only when you put two records together that you can see a direction and a tone. It’s the power of the combination of music, and that is what is fascinating to me about DJing.

Electronic music trends

As DJs, we play every day, every week, all the time; so our sound is constantly changing and evolving. New trends are always coming and they should keep coming. Because as DJs, it’s our job to create something new. Not necessarily to play something new, but to create something new.

Right now the classic house sound is a back, and guys like Dennis Ferrer and DJ Sneak are coming back because their beats are dope and super tight.

In the past, it has been suggested that there are a few DJs like Luciano, Ricardo Villalobos, Sven Vath and maybe me, that are possibly leading the club music trends, but I think that’s only because we often play to bigger crowds and bigger audiences, so our influence is that much more apparent. But whilst we might be bringing in new sounds to a large audience, there’s probably some kid in a bedroom somewhere who started putting classic house into techno sets long ago.

Music wise, I’m always on the look out for my sound. I still go record shopping in my home town of Düsseldorf where there are two record shops that I go to. One of them I’ve been going to since 1994 and I used to buy hip hop vinyl from them, so the guys in there now all about me and my sound. They still keep a little shelf for me so even if I don’t go back for one month I don’t miss anything.

The first time I met Luciano was at DC10. He was standing at the bar with no shoes on.

I normally know exactly what I want, and sometimes the guys in the shop hold their heads in their hands when they see me discarding records within a few seconds of listening to them. “But Dice, you haven’t even listened to it yet,” they might complain. But I tell them that I know what I want exactly and it doesn’t fit.

Ultimately, I try to find timeless music, because music should be timeless. Back in 2002 when I was playing at DC10 I was playing lots of tech house and drum heavy percussion tracks but then I discovered all this old great techno and minimal music by guys like Dan Bell and Robert Hood and it was amazing.

And then by combining the old skool techno with new skool sounds it sounded fresh. And I still do that to this day, like last night, I played Bob Sinclar ‘The Ghetto’ and the club went completely crazy. Sure I didn’t play the full vocal version that everyone knows, but by taking a part of that record and blending it with other elements it blew the roof off.

DJ friendships

The first time I met Luciano was at DC10. He was standing at the bar with no shoes on. I kind of recognized him because he had just released an album on Peacefrog. So we started talking and immediately hit it off. We ended up hanging out at DC10 all day, and then rolling on through to Cocoon - it’s funny how those stretched Mondays always lead to new friends. We discovered that we played very similar music with the same kind of feelings, so we became really good friends. Now we play together all the time and our sounds go great together. When we DJ back to back, we’re always smiling. He’s like my little brother.

Loco Dice and Luciano on the decks

For a long time I used to say to Luciano, “come on man, you have to try Serato”, but he was totally against it. Then one day he tried it and loved it, and now he’s using Traktor like me. In the end, when you tour so much like us we can’t be lugging vinyl around. Because if your records get lost and you’re standing in front of 2000 people and can’t play, it’s a disaster. So laptops are the safety net. But both Luciano and I still collect vinyl, and both still think vinyl is important. For instance, even though I still get all of Cadenza’s records as promos I still buy them all on vinyl because I’m a collector and like the artwork. I just spent a bomb on an expensive new shelf for my vinyl.

Sven and Ricardo love vinyl so much too, and they refuse to play on anything except vinyl, although I’ve heard Ricardo uses CDs now too. It’s important to have people like this in the scene, to show the kids that it’s still possible to rock the house using only vinyl: we play wax only.

Club residencies

Tribehouse, the Düsseldorf club I’ve been resident at for a long time, will close in May forever. For the three owners, after 15 years, it’s over for them and I respect that.

They’ve had their ups and downs like all clubs, and they had a great time but the owners felt it would be good to end on a high. I’ll miss playing there.

I’ll be a resident at Cocoon in Ibiza again this summer, and it’s a great party always. I’m of the belief that if you find a good club with a good crowd, you stick with them.

Loco Dice’s ‘The Lab’ mix for NRK will be released in March.