Maddy O'Neal On DJing As MADHAUS: "I Was In A Full-On Love Affair With The Genre"

Maddy O’Neal swung by to talk about her house alias, from its origins to whether fans can expect any original MADHAUS music in the future.

Maddy O’Neal is widely known in the electronic music world for the funky bass sound she’s honed over the past 13 years. But recently, the Denver-based producer has been leaving her mark as a DJ in the house scene with her side project, MADHAUS.

The idea of playing house music first came to Maddy O’Neal right before the pandemic. She and her friend — fellow bass artist Megan Hamilton — had toyed with the idea of pursuing the genre together under the name “House Wives.”

It never became a reality, but the pandemic brought Maddy O’Neal extra free time she used to experiment with mixing. She bought a deck of CDJs using a business loan and started live streaming herself playing house sets. It was then that MADHAUS was born.

“I was hooked,” Maddy O’Neal said. “It helped me improve my mixing skills and I was in a full-on love affair with the genre.”

Since the pandemic years, MADHAUS has grown from an in-home passion project to a name found on festival rosters and afters flyers. Maddy credits her “selection” and “appetite” for the opportunity to appear at events like Electric Forest, Burning Man, Shambhala Music Festival, and Yahn Dawn, the lattermost of which is coming up on September 18 in Buena Vista, Colorado.

When asked which artists inspire her lately, she pointed to Mau P, Odd Mob, Deflee, and Mita Gami. “I’m a big fan of the chunky tech house vibes that have some vintage soul and hip-hop infused,” she explained. “I find myself vibing to tracks that have big analog synth tones, soulful vocals, and dark deep house.”

Maddy said she loves exposing bass heads to house music that evokes the same feelings they love in their go-to style — such as analog warmth, hip-hop and grime influence, and soulful qualities. She posits that her taste in house music has the same emotional and sonic DNA as her taste in bass music, just in a different format.

While she mostly plays original music and flips in her bass sets using Ableton and drum pads, her abilities as a music curator shine most brightly through MADHAUS.

When I’m playing house, I’m much more in a selector mindset than a producer and showcase mentality. I can stretch and be much more fluid in these MADHAUS sets, which is super fun for me. I can read a room and go in so many different directions. House music is so much more of a consistent trance vibe, so I really try to curate the tension and release.
Maddy O’Neal

Maddy O’Neal hasn’t released any music as MADHAUS yet, but she promised that she plans to do so soon. She admitted to sitting on a few tunes for the last 18 months, but said they had been put on the back burner with her nonstop touring and release schedule.

With so much time passed, she said the songs don’t feel representative of her current tastes anymore. She wants her first release to feel purposeful, authentic, and encapsulate her vision for MADHAUS.

“Now that I am where I am and have dived so much deeper into the world, the original songs I produced don’t feel representative of me or my taste now,” Maddy explained. “I really want to have enough time to formulate my first house release intentionally and feel like it represents me in that space.”

She did, however, plug her new single, “On My Mind,” off her forthcoming bass EP titled Desire coming out on October 13. She then concluded the interview on an appreciative note, expressing gratitude over her fans being receptive to her expressing herself creatively in different genres.

I am just super grateful that I have the space to express myself in multiple worlds artistically. The music industry can be so tough and with such an emphasis on branding now, it’s hard to have the space to be diverse and understood at the same time. I just hope that seeing me have a foot in both worlds can be inspiring to other artists who have the urge to be more experimental — and also, shout out to all my fans new and old for embracing it as well.
Maddy O’Neal