For more than a decade, Loco Dice has been at the very forefront of underground electronic music, tirelessly pushing both himself and those around him forward to nurture, develop and in the last few years champion a scene about which he is extraordinarily passionate.

From acclaimed releases on Cocoon and his own Desolat record labels to becoming an Ibiza idol for hundreds of thousands of fans around the world, Dice continues to set the bar high and 2013 has been a big year already, even by Dice’s standards. Aside from his new Used + Abused residency – one of the flagship parties at Ushuaia Beach Hotel in Ibiza – and gigs in pretty much every country you could name, he’s even found time to set up a free weekly cinema on Playa De’n Bossa, something about  weary clubbers of the White Isle are no doubt extremely welcome.

In the midst of all this though, perhaps the most surprising move came with the announcement of Loco Dice In The House; a mix album in collaboration with Defected that surely could have been anticipated by precisely no-one. But as Dice himself states, this was something that simply had to happen...

You’re new night Used + Abused kicked off in Ibiza this year… how has it been so far?

It’s been crazy. I have never seen that kind of mass of people in Ibiza to be honest. Normally you see that somewhere like Cocoon is packed, but it’s so dark you can’t really see that much but at Ushuaia you can see how many people there are. It’s a great thing how many people are now coming to hear our music which we call underground music. In a club like Ushuaia I had an amazing feeling; I have to say I was really in a fantastic mood. Without thinking about anything else I was just proud and happy about what we achieved over all these years with our music and our scene.

Why did you feel it was this year to break out and set up your own thing?

It was a feeling, like with the Defected mix CD – it’s the year of things coming together. I don’t know man it came together and I was not planning it. I was not thinking about it, it just came. It just happened, we had this idea one night me and my partner drinking wine thinking we could and then two or three weeks Ushuaia came up to us and asked if we would like to run a party. It was a feeling so I was like yeah why not let’s do this. I know things can go wrong here and there with organisation and this and that but all of that stuff that I was scared about doing a party but I am totally relaxed because it was a decision which comes from the stomach and it’s just natural how everything is coming together right now.

With the amount of people who come to Ushuaia and other big stages, do you think there’s an expectation about the kind of way you have to play? Are there certain records you feel you have to drop?

Of course as a DJ if you start to think too much you drive yourself crazy and more or less fail at the end. At the end you should just let yourself go and your feelings and your experience will guide you through those masses of people this way. Honestly the people are always expecting something, especially when you have a huge crowd like this. You might have 20% hardcore fans who accept anything you play then you have 20% people who have never heard anything about you they just follow the hype of Loco Dice or Ushuaia, then you have 20% fans of others DJs and so on. So to deliver a sound or a certain style to this crowd it is sometimes difficult, but our scene would not be our scene if we do not do what we do.  

You’ve had quite a diverse upbringing in where you have been and where you have lived. Do you think that is an important factor for people to travel and experience different kinds of music traditions to fully develop themselves as an artist?

100%. I mean when you see my line-up you see people from Richie Hawtin and Marcel Dettman who are techno until you arrive at people who can be very soulful like Jus-Ed, DJ Qu, Matthew Styles or Dixon. So this is how I grew up. I grew up between all these mixed styles, this is how my sound is in the end and this is what I want to represent when I do my own night. I am very happy that all my friends and colleagues said yes and they are not scared sharing the stage when next week might be Dubfire and the week before could be Dixon. Like I said, DJs always say they cannot play somewhere because this kind of sound is there. I think Ibiza is the best ground to show that we can combine all of it. The same people can come every week and have different kinds of music which is hopefully entertaining, inspiring and motivating.

An artist like yourself, Luciano, Solomun and others have managed to build these incredible careers without having massive hit records – certainly not at a pop music scale – which is traditionally how mainstream artists have built their careers. How do you think you guys have achieved that?

From the beginning I would perhaps take Luciano out because Luciano had a couple of hits which were huge, all over the scenes with the label Cadenza. He had it easier compared to let’s say Solomon who came from Hamburg all the way. I felt it a long time ago in Cocoon when you could see upstairs into the VIP and see people who might go to see other DJs at Pacha to listen to vocal house, commercial house or commercial pop music and all the sudden they are somehow fed up and then you see them at the VIP terrace. People like Puff Daddy, for example comes from Hip Hop and all of a sudden he comes to techno. So you see our music was evolving a lot, became more accessible and people were becoming more brave to come to the underground parties to check out what’s going on. And this is what we achieved in the end; it’s not a certain DJ that has achieved this, the whole community put a stamp on the end.

And by maintaining a level of consistency in the quality of the music you were making and playing…

It’s quality in the end, without dissing any other scenes or anything like that but with us it’s like everybody is always trying to make something new. If you see what Richie Hawtin does every few years he has found something new, we have the concept of CNTRL and he got ENTER. Me now with Used + Abused and Sven with what he does with Cocoon. We don’t just go on the stage and want to fill people with CO2 cannons and confetti and all that shit. We get that stuff for sure and sometimes that can be a part of the experience, but it's about more than that, For us it’s about digging and finding new artists to give them a chance or a platform to represent themselves and represent our scene. These new artists are the ones who motivate us and inspire us to play more new music, different music or bring the oldies back and that’s a cycle which is always refreshing and is very high on a quality level which is why I think we are where we are.

And that consistency and slow growth – compared to the meteoric rise of what’s called EDM – is perhaps why the underground has remained stable..

Yeah you are right but I see it from another angle, I always say the press is responsible for all that shit. It’s always the press. It’s not only music but football is like this, politics is like this, everything is like that. You have this certain hype which they call EDM, they put all electronic DJs in this fucking pot and now they bust it up. The promoters are jumping on this hype; you can make a lot of money with that shit right now.

What we’re doing is harder to label. What do you want to write about for an underground artist like Jus-Ed? You have to dig deeper to find out certain artists still exist. And then you have house, you have techno, you have deep house, you have this you have that. How can a journalist really dive into it? This is why it’s difficult to create hype about this type of music. This is how it was with EDM, they blow it up. Believe me maybe in a year EDM is out and everyone is digging for someone else. This is why we do not belong to EDM, we have been doing our shit for 20 years and longer and it’s working. And it’s working because even if sometimes one of our people or a type of our music get the hype, we always kill the hype by playing different or doing something else.

Tell us about hooking up with Defected for the In The House album... The response so far has been incredible and very accepting, did you think it might have caused a few more raised eyebrows?

For sure. I mean every time when two different people come together it’s always like that; people look at it a bit strange and say “what is this project”? Some other people put me in a commercial type and they say “see, we told you he is commercial”. You have a lot of people who would talk, which is great it keeps all this stuff alive. Defected have been there from day one, and everybody knows how they started to help out labels like Subliminal, Strictly Rhythm and all the old school labels by resigning and relicensing them. I see Defected as doing their thing, it is great and it is house music. I think we all belong together and we all should do something at one point together. Like I said when Simon spoke to me and we had the chat, it was obvious we have got to do something. I think when people listen to the mix CD they will be satisfied. Of course you will have a lot of haters but this is typical and normal. I think most of the people from the Defected scene or from my scene will be satisfied and will say that it is cool, that it fits and it is 100% real.



In terms of the actual selections on the compilation, did you have what people might perceive as a Defected audience in mind when you put it together?

People try to adapt a style, but I didn’t do it because like I said Defected and me found each other. It was obvious we should do something together. Why? Because I play deep house, I have those types of records that the Defected crowd like, but I play it different. I might choose the B side instead of the A side, so I won’t shock them but I might motivate them and freshen up a little bit. I might have a cool vocal but I will drop a techno beat under it. So the response will be there and like I said before I didn’t need to go away from my style to be like Defected.

Nowadays there are so many free mixes and podcasts which you can get and everything else without buying an official compilation. What do you think makes a mix like this stand out?

First of all you have to buy it which means you are supporting the industry. Not me or someone’s pocket, but you want the scene to stay alive for you to get quality music. So you go and buy it. Second you have amazing packaging which you can put on your shelf, in your car and it’s still real having something in your hand. Even though you have those guys who buy digital, okay it’s good for them also, but it’s something special which you should own. For the people of course you are right with the masses of podcasts and everything like that but did you ever find something special like this? Loco Dice does something with Defected? I think its special and that’s why people should go out there and just get their piece.

What else are you working on at the moment, have you got anything set to release later this year?

I am constantly working on something. I have so many things cooking here in my studio, if I started to tell you now we would stay here until tomorrow. So many things are going on from different directions.

For a lot of aspiring young producers and DJs you are a benchmark of success because you have had such a fantastic career. What inspires you to continue to push the boundaries…

The people that I inspire, they re-inspire me. It is give and take. It’s very important that all of these newcomers who I might inspire or motivate to be a DJ then come back to me with mix CDs and demos and they feed me with new music, music which keeps me going. This is what makes our scene – the underground scene – so strong and so solid because there is constantly a motivation and inspiration which we are getting back. It is a cycle and then one day it is time for the new generation and we pass it over. These days as a bedroom DJ you don’t have much of an opportunity to perform next to us big names at somewhere like Creamfields for example. But it can happen. It can happen because we make it happen, we keep the circle alive. That’s the exciting thing, you know?

Interview: Greg Sawyer

Defected presents Loco Dice In The House is out 21st July - order from iTunes

Loco Dice hosts Used + Abused every Thursday at Ushuaia Beach Hotel