Biography

Dexter Tortoriello writes music with his projects Houses and Dawn Golden. 
 The past five years have been undeniably busy for Tortoriello. After relocating from Chicago to LA, he released Houses’ sophomore album A Quiet Darkness, along with a debut full-length as Dawn Golden on Diplo’s Mad Decent label the following spring. A slate of high-profile remixes have established him as a dance world heavyweight, while writing and producing for artists like Lil Yachty, Kali Uchis and Russ refined his songcraft. His new work finds him creating Houses’ most fully realized and complexly detailed output to date. Drugstore Heaven is a selection of songs matching graceful experimentation with raw emotion and unprecedented vulnerability. "The album is called Drugstore Heaven because I used to hide needles under the diapers in Walgreens around Chicago so I didn’t have to carry contraband on me. I would get high in the bathroom there every day. 9/11 and the cultural fallout after was like our Vietnam and summer of love. We shot heroin and smoked crack cooked with 7up. My friends died in fast food bathrooms and four-plexes, in the air conditioned basements of decaying suburbia. The whole city is holy ground. The Burger King in where Chadd died, the back alley in Maywood where I watched Andrew brush the barrel of a 357 off the back of his head while we got stuck up. This album is a memorial to a way of life - to the people and places who were a part of it when we were all a part of it."