Cover Feature: Loco Dice

With giant billboards lining the drive from the airport into Ibiza town declaring that Dice is back, was there a reason he stepped away?

"I was exhausted," he says candidly, describing the toll taken by his non-stop schedule. Talking euphemistically about living "very intensely" during his Circoloco years, a time when he shared a villa over the summer with Antonio from the party, these days Dice goes to the gym every day. "I was doing all kinds of crazy stuff," he says with a flash of his irrepressible smile, pointing out that he hasn't completely given up afterparties: the previous weekend in Cannes spent hanging out with Visionquest, Tale of Us and Mind Against. It's just that he's begun to appreciate life beyond excess.

Last summer, as well finishing the album in his Düsseldorf studio, he refocused his energies on his label, Desolat, and friends outside of clubs: "People who know me as Dice," he says of his original nick-name, before he earned the prefix 'Loco', meaning 'mad'. "Dice the dancer, Dice the sprayer, Dice the homie on the street trying to survive not being German." With many of these old neighbourhood friends unimpressed by techno, they're his secret grounding – alongside his family, who he mentions but won't reveal anything about. "That's my life when I'm away from all this."

He's still tight with the DJs he knows from his hip hop days, too: Tapesh, Kurd Maverick, even Chuckie, "a 'commercial' DJ" he says, bristling at another label people are quick to ascribe but whose meaning has become blurred. Loyalty and respect are at the heart of what Dice does. He's open to creative ideas from anybody in his team, from bookers to PAs, and has allies in the most unlikely of places.

"Our friendship seems awkward coming from such different backgrounds, but we have more in common that you think," says Miss Kittin, who came to Dice's studio in Düsseldorf to record vocals for 'Burn Ca$h Ash'. An album cut that harks back to the glory days of electro house, its lyrics encapsulate the ennui and inflated egos of DJ life that Dice says he's circumnavigated. "It's rare enough in our business," she says of their longstanding connection, which started in the early years of Dice's residency at DC10, where they played back-to-back and he'd rinse her track 'The Beach'. "Of course, we also have different approaches to our careers, but we both know where we come from."