When most travelers go to Hawaii, their days are lazy and filled with gentle sunbeams gracing their skin or shoving roasted pig into their gullet. But when you are Chicago ambient group Houses, things are different. They did manual labor on a farm during the day and worked on music in the evening. Upon their return to the Upper 48, things moved rather quickly for Dexter Tortoriello and Megan Messina. The duo recorded their debut record, All Night, quickly signed to Lefse Records—home of How to Dress Well and former home of Neon Indian—and performed at this year’s CMJ Music Marathon.
Now they have found themselves in a weird spot. They are now looking forward to performing at SXSW, and plan to tour on their way there, including a stop at Lincoln Hall on Jan. 12, but have come up short on money. So they came up with a unique way to fundraise: by writing people personalized songs. Tortoriello spoke with The A.V. Club about Houses, Hawaii, and the hospitality he’s received.
The A.V. Club: Conceptually, you compare your sound with bands like Four Tet and Eluvium, but as your music spread on the internet, you got lumped in with the Chillwave crowd.
Dexter Tortoriello: It’s funny. When we were in Hawaii, we didn’t have a lot of access to the Internet or any other music, so I missed the whole coming of the Chillwave. When I got back home, I heard Neon Indian for the first time and loved him, and then I kind of came into Toro Y Moi and Washed Out and stuff like that, and I really loved those guys.
AVC: Were you hesitant to lump yourself in with that crew?
DT: I don’t think it has a negative connotation, but people try to make it that way. I mean, I was making songs in my bedroom and then started a MySpace page, and then four days later, I was contacted by a record label. And this was by no doing of my own. I was in the right place at the right time. But now that the record is out, we’ve been getting reviews that kind of put us closer to the sound than I think we are.