The sad, melodic, and sometimes beat-driven music of Dexter Tortoriello

November 2, 2013 9:58 PM

Dexter Tortoriello makes various forms of sad music. The most prolific persona is Houses, which is a duo with his girlfriend Megan Messina, which Tortoriello thinks of in terms of "old Elephant 6 recordings," though it's been classified with the chillwave craze of the recent years, escapist songs are understated in mood and minimalist in structure. Then there's his solo project, Dawn Golden and Rosy Cross, named for the centuries-old secret occult sect Golden Dawn and the symbol of Rosicrucianism, built with intensely sculpted collection of skittering electronics and delicate acoustic textures, ... marked by heavy beats and synthesizer pads. You can hear tracks from both projects on Soundcloud (Houses; Dawn Golden) and YouTube (Houses official channel, and a playlist for A Quiet Darkness, the newest Houses album).
posted by filthy light thief (5 comments total)

There are some downloadable tracks on Soundcloud, both from Houses and Dawn Golden. Also of note, there is a stalled Dawn Golden side-project, Against the Storm, which was supposed to be a multi-volume effort to create something inspired by "early 1920’s ‘Golden Age of Radio’ broadcasting, where you could tune in and hear a mix of music, stories, news, etcetera," with the long-term plan to broadcast the mixes on shortwave radio. I'm not sure if that ever happened, but the over-all effort stalled out two years ago after only one volume was produced.

An alternate title for this post was going to be "Houses and Dawn Golden: music to combat your holiday cheer," taken in part from this mini-mix of edits of Aphex Twin, Burial and other artists.

Parting note: you can listen to most of the tracks from All Night, the first Houses album, streaming on Grooveshark.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:05 PM on November 2, 2013

Oh, and on Myspace you can hear the remixes of the Blow EP from Dawn Golden. I'm not sure where the original EP went (Dexter said he oriignally posted it for free online), but since signing with Diplo's Mad Decent, it seems the original upload might have disappeared, replaced by links to purchase the EP.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:12 PM on November 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

A friend of mine once called DGRC's White Sun a Reznor remix of Primitive Radio Gods.

Thanks for this post, I'm a huge fan of DGRC and this is gonna give me some music for a while. I just started with the White Lies remix, and it's excellent.

Oh yeah, the remix of Summer Camp is great too.
posted by yeahwhatever at 12:40 AM on November 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Interesting and amusing analogy to Reznor/PRG. Some of those tracks remind me of something between Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and Xiu Xiu (which could get us to Former Ghosts territory).

If that's too much electronic noise, there's also the acoustic, more Houses-like stuff from Golden Dawn, including this cover of "Colorblind" by Counting Crows.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:21 AM on November 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

FTL, thanks for the post. It makes for very good listening.
posted by PROD_TPSL at 4:41 PM on November 3, 2013