Ricardo Villalobos was born in Santiago de Chile in 1970. Following the military coup in 1973, his parents fled to Darmstadt, Germany, where he began an informal musical education taking in samba, salsa and synth pop. In the early 1980s, Villalobos became an avowed Depeche Mode fanatic and began tinkering with his first Roland SH101 synthesizer while learning various South American percussion instruments.
His epiphanic introduction to dance music came in 1988, when Acid House blew into continental Europe from Chicago via the UK and permanently changed the course of German electronic music. Soon after, he DJed his first club gigs and organised illegal warehouse and Autobahn underpass parties, as well as more intimate soirées in his parents’ basement with visiting legends like Boo Williams and Carl Craig. In 1992 he released his first 12", while pursuing degrees in law and political science at Darmstadt Technical University. He quit education to concentrate on music full time, which began to pay off following mid-90s releases on Playhouse and subsequent residencies at Frankfurt’s The Box and Omen.
As the city’s flourishing electronic scene moved on from its EBM roots towards newer rave vistas, Villalobos’s deep, Minimal House and Techno morphed from a barebones Rhythm And Sound aesthetic (1999’s “808 The Bass Queen”) to the more confident Halma EP (2002). By the release of his first longplayer Alcachofa in 2003, Minimal Techno had become a recognised genre, and Villalobos one of the most respected practitioners of its Berlin-centric second wave.
Since then, his star has continued to rise, both as a DJ of marathon sets and a producer, releasing critically acclaimed LPs and numerous club 12"s. Over the years there has been a shift from his hallucinatory, minimal, conga-inflected sound into a more experimental mode, marked by extended forays into modular synthesis.
Ricardo Villalobos lives in Berlin.
(Excerpt taken from The Wire Magazine, February 2013, Issue 348)
