Biography
"Hi everyone, I'm your best friend back in town again
to get you a new dancing beat"
(sampled voice on "Move your feet to the rhythm of the beat")
Peter Slaghuis is 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 one 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 Blue-tiek Inn in Rotterdam, in team with Leon M.Terlouw,
which will also be his partner for several projects on the Rotterdam-based Hotsound label) 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 underound" (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) before disappearing into legend.
Peter Slaghuis sadly dies in a car accident a couple of years later, 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.
It won't even be the last time. The same idea is recycled in 1998 by a German production,
Bruce Wayne's "No good for me".
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