FRESH MEET: HAUNTED HOUSE PARTY
WORDS: KARLEY SCIORTINO

How would you describe your music?
Electro-pop euphoric house synth-poppery, with a nod towards Ibiza circa 1998.

How did Haunted House Party come together?
We formed in 2004. I started playing in a pub in Glasgow on a Sunday evening on my own with a sequencer. Tom worked there, and we kind of knew each other from gigs our bands had played together before - me in Errors and Tom in Park Attack. Then one week Tom brought his synth down and played over my sequencer. It totally worked. We decided to do gigs together after that. At first we pretended we were DJs. We played music from behind the DJ booth to see if anyone liked it. When we realized we were okay, we came out and started doing gigs on stage.

What’s with all the electronic music coming out of Glasgow recently? Do you feel an affiliation with any other Glaswegian electronic acts?
I think a lot of the electronic music in Glasgow is not as simple as the stuff we play. People are into fucked-up, noise gabba shit here. Acts like Germlin, Gay Against You, and Smile For The Cameraman Honey are all making pretty interesting, yet fucked-up music that doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me. I still appreciate it all though. That’s a good thing about Glasgow - the fact that most people are willing to give the time of day to acts that others would prematurely label as shite.

What’s the best thing about living in Glasgow?
The majority of people here are creative and can be arsed doing things like forming bands, putting on nights, founding record labels, and dancing to the music we make.

Who do you idolize?
Definitely Iggy Pop. We have this amazing Iggy Pop DVD that has loads of interviews with him and footage from old gigs. We like to watch that before we play. It’s totally inspirational.

What sort of music did you listen to whilst growing up?
I was into indie music and stuff my brother passed down to me, like Korn and Nirvana. I hated dance music at school because I associated it with the arseholes that made fun of me for having long hair.

When did dance music become appealing to you?
It was only when I was about 15 that I started liking it. I remember when I first heard “Up and Down” by Vengaboys. I thought, ‘Fuck! Dance music is actually cool. You get to make cool noises and repeat things for ages.’

What are your plans for the future?
A 12-inch came out this summer on White Heat records with “Ibiza”, “Gold Dust” and “Europoof”. Until this point we have only been making our own cassettes in very small quantities and selling them at gigs. Basically our goal with Haunted House at the moment is to release our best songs, and then move on and re-invent ourselves... like Madonna.

From: Glasgow
Website: myspace.com/hauntedhouseparty