Meet Dexter and Megan; they are Houses.
Dexter Tortoriello is a twenty-five year old producer from Chicago who has been plying his musical trade with a solo project called Dawn Golden and Rosy Cross for a little while now. When not working on that, Tortoriello now makes music with partner Megan for this new title Houses, which is of course the whole point of this post.
I came across Dexter the human being before the group, which is a rare and quite novel way to find out about someone’s music these days. I started reading his residency diary (an artist writes a journal entry about what they’ve been up to every week for one month) on an American group-run music blog (which by the way is a fantastic website). I gained a view of someone with a gentile and inquisitive mind, that was whilst a little melancholic, quite at ease with its own expression; talking about different things that were happening around him, his cats, places he’d been, the music he’d listened to and haikus he’d attempted to write. There was a cerebral steadiness to it all. I was intrigued enough to go and find out more about his music, and found there to be a great many reflections.
It would be unfair to say that Dawn Golden and Rosy Cross is entirely atmospheric, but it does certainly come across as that sort of ongoing aural sound-scaping personal endeavour. What is really refreshing listening to Houses is how the entry of a second subject into Tortoriello’s playground seems to have added a healthy sort of pressure to the music. The dynamics are more focussed on a singular, immediate moment, and meeting point between these two voices. It is a seamless collision in which together there seems to be less doubt. It comes across as holistic, rather than fragmentary.
The songs currently available have comparatively less tracks and layers, but with a more instrumentally substantial approach, to some of it at least. This breeds a deep sense of purity, from which I think much of its life springs from. There is indeed placed a great focus on nature, as Dexter explains; “I got laid off from my job at the end of last year and decided I needed a change. Megan put in her two weeks and we moved out to a little cabin in Papaikou, Hawaii. It’s a pretty remote place outside of Hilo (i.e no plumbing/electricity/gas). We worked for meals during the day cultivating indigenous microorganisms and learning the basics of sustainable living. We drank showered and cooked with rain water. It was a beautifully simple experience. In our downtime, she would paint and I would record. We’d have to light candles in an effort to save solar power to keep my computer running. We inspired each other a lot out there, and I think it shows in the music. She sings on a lot of the tracks on All Night. The music comes from a place of love and ease. The video for Endless Spring was shot there in our spare time, and the music was sketched out loosely over the course of a few months. We just kind of melted into one person.”
From all that has been released so far, it is a deeply hopeful experience.
Houses are set to release more tracks online today, and a full-length album All Night is to follow in April. Watch a video preview of the album below.
Find out even more about them here.
