- Some Sydney friends taught me a very important Japanese saying/shouting before I came over to Japan: “II KYOYU DA!!!" It means "TUUUNE" and it will be used liberally at appropriate times tonight, just as "Yabai” was employed in Osaka. The reason: tonight, Loco Dice brings 7 Dunham Place to the 6F Intexx Ebisu Building. How many ways can you do deep?
The dishy Desolat dealer from Düsseldorf will show us just how many. He starts off low-down and rolling, staying true to his MySpace motto "Forward Ever, Backward Never". Its 12:20 AM, the main room is starting to fill up and the first vocal of the night creeps in through the 4/4 bumping, just a hint of "fooonk" or "voooomp".
Dice has described 7 Dunham Place as "reduced grooves, kept infinitely personal". Clearly, for minimal to survive, it needs the sex. Tonight, Loco is layering lusty, unpredictable keys over his beats, opting for less wonky stuff and instead fleshing out tracks like 'Breakfast at Nina's', 'Got Leaks in the Roof' and 'Pimp Jackson is Talking Now!!!'. He has the Funktion One system humming like a humburger—my pre-disco food tonight, followed by tequila—and the speakers in the top bar coax the locals to throw mild shapes. Time to jack, jack.
The VJ is having a wonderful time, running the gamut from thwacked golf balls to Lebowski bowling balls to Xanadu shooting stars and cascading CDs. A local leans over and starts taking photos of my notes, so I ask him how he would describe the visuals. "Very visual!" he replies. Bless.
The Womb cats whisk your scribe side of stage at 1:00 AM just as the place is starting to go properly loco/Loco. Every 16 bars Dice drops another whooooooshing peak and the crowd—made up of Brazilians, the odd Australian and young locals—go nuts, shouting like they've just won pachinko. Shit, his whooooooshing eruptions would make even Joris Voorn turn a progressive shade of aqua.
Loco is jacking his torso and has the disco wings out, throwing in a touch of Detroit with a tune reminiscent of 'Knights of the Jaguar'—but a reduced groove, infinitely more personal.
His groupie/girlfriend gives her best trout pout, wearing two black gaffer tape strips like a nicotine patch. And the promoters are wrapping each other up with the same roll of tape, while Loco doubles up the beat with a fresh percussive monster. A distant vocal makes us strain our ears before 'Tight Laces' ker-thumps and Loco hits his stride, um, again, causing his designated groupie to butt-hump the monitor. He is jacking now too, very carefully introducing a dubby piano line before shattering lobes/glass/expectations with a scorching drop that is the exact reason you and I listen to dance music. "Ii kyoku da!!!"
Nearing 5 AM, a swathe of dry ice fills the room as Dice gives the "Holy Shit" open jaw look then follows it with a handclap that catches on super-fast. He throws ice playfully at the VIPs who return fire, narrowly missing one of three turntables. It's the only time the mix is threatened in 7.5 hours.
Dice brings his 4/4 jet down to land smoothly at 6.20am, then lets it fly for a 10 minute encore, before touching down once again. He beams a smile at every member of the crowd, personally.