Latroit

Latroit is the foremost alias of Los Angeles-based, Detroit-rooted producer Dennis White. Although the house artist debuted the name in the mid-2010s, he has been active in dance music since the late '80s, when he became a touring musician with Kevin Saunderson's Inner City. In addition to several charting remixes under the guise -- including one for Depeche Mode's "You Move," which won a Grammy in 2018 -- White has released numerous solo and collaborative Latroit singles for the high-profile Armada and Dim Mak labels, along with his own outlet, House of Latroit. Originally from Detroit and raised directly north of the Motor City in Utica, Dennis White attended Berklee College of Music, after which he returned to the city of his birth and formed Charm Farm with fellow Berklee student Tommy Onyx. White and Onyx happened to be living in a loft on what Derrick May termed Techno Boulevard, within close proximity to May and other high-tech soul innovators such as Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson. The circumstances led to the latter enlisting White and Onyx to perform with Inner City. Touring England to play Top Ten U.K. hits "Big Fun" and "Good Life" (which also topped the U.S. club chart), White was inspired by seeing rock bands such as the Stone Roses and Primal Scream play raves. He took a similar approach to mixing club and rock music back in the States with Charm Farm, whose recordings through the mid-'90s culminated with the Mercury-licensed album Pervert. White maintained connections with several genres the whole time, either remixing or playing on recordings by the likes of the Final Cut, George Clinton, and Kenny Larkin, traversing industrial, funk, and techno. He also continued to work with Saunderson as part of Unreleased Project. White's own output by the end of the '90s included singles and remixes as the Love Club, Static Revenger, and Control Freq. Well into the 2010s, he continued to rack up 12" releases on F-111, Subliminal, and Ministry of Sound, among other labels, operating most often as Static Revenger. Starting in 2014, he concentrated on the commercial house-oriented Latroit, issuing primarily solo material on House of Latroit and collaborating with the likes of Bishøp, Stooki Sound, and Lliam for Armada and Dim Mak releases. Most successful was his 2017 remix of Depeche Mode's "You Move," which won a Grammy in the category of Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical. Additional remix commissions followed suit, but White was behind a larger amount of original material, such as the two-part Inner City reunion "You Give Me That Feeling" (2018) and "Four on the Floor" (2019). ~ Andy Kellman