Peter Slaghuis

Peter Slaghuis

The name Hithouse is Peter's last name in English. Slag means Hit, Huis means House. So in English his name would be Peter Hithouse.

Peter Slaghuis was a meteor in the world of dance music in mid and late eighties.
Based in Holland, Slaghuis gets known in the world of underground djs for his fourteen albums of "Disco Breaks", and builds a credibility with a series of remixes, like Abba's "Lay all your love on me", Maria Vidal's "Body rock" and especially the million selling Nu Shooz hit "I can't wait", in 1986.

In 1984 he is also involved in dance act The Video Kids, releasing the single "Woodpeckers from space".

When the house music phenomenon reaches Europe, not only Slaghuis is one of the first dutch deejays to spin house (at the Bluetiek Inn in Rotterdam) but also one of the pioneers of sampling, with a couple of 1988/89 hits made under the name Hithouse. His first hit record is "Jack to the sound of the underground" (the term "jack" comes from Chicago house slang and recalls the act of frenetically dancing to a house beat - see US titles like Steve "Silk" Hurley's "Jack your body") and at the beginning it lifts some samples from Coldcut's "Say kids what time is it". The track goes to no.14 in the UK charts. "Jack to the sound..." also is one of the first records to have an "acid" remix treatment, and finally the track itself gets sampled on Italian underground dance hit "Judicta" by Mod n.4.

The sequel ("Move your feet to the rhythm of the beat") isn't equally lucky. The formula is basically the same (a catchy hi-energy loop covered with a collection of samples) but it lacks of those catchy hooklines that were present in the first one. One of these was a large excerpt of Kelly Charles' "You're no good for me".

After these two singles and a bunch of some other minor productions (like a weird remix of Lynn Collins' version of the classic Isley Brothers-penned "Shout", obscure dj-only mixes like a DMC remix of Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" and the Holy Noise project with his dj friend Paul Elstak, later known as the godfather of gabber and owner of Rotterdam Records), Hithouse mixes one of the versions of the Technotronic megahit "Pump up the jam" (both acts were on the same Benelux label, ARS) and founds [l=Hithouse Records].

Peter Slaghuis sadly dies in a car accident a couple of years later (5-sep-1991), but honest historians of dance music will never be able to deny that he gave a small -but essential- contribution to the birth of sampling and electronic scene. The Kelly Charles sample resurfaces in 1994, as the vocal hook on a major international hit: "No good" - by none else than The Prodigy.

http://www.peterslaghuis.com
https://www.facebook.com/HitHousePeterSlaghuis