Loco Dice

Loco Dice’s driving, bass-heavy sound helped define 21st-century tech-house, but the German DJ/producer didn’t get his start in dance music. Born to Tunisian immigrants in Düsseldorf in 1974, Yassine Ben Achour absorbed the influence of North African and Middle Eastern music as a child, and as a teenager, he began DJing hip-hop. By the late ’90s, Timo Maas and Martin Buttrich had coaxed him to try his hand at dance music, and he began producing lean, punchy club tools for labels like Richie Hawtin’s Minus and Josh Wink’s Ovum. While Loco Dice built his reputation on hedonistic DJ sets at clubs like Ibiza’s DC-10, his debut album, 2008’s 7 Dunham Place, showed a softer, more contemplative side of his personality. On 2018’s Love Letters, he further developed his signature style of stripped-down club tracks, with one foot in American house and techno and the other in European minimalism. His remixes for artists as diverse as Disclosure, Black Coffee, or the trio of Skrillex, Boys Noize, and Ty Dolla $ign, meanwhile, have confirmed Loco Dice as one of the preeminent ambassadors of contemporary tech-house.