Office Listening: Hercules & Love Affair

Image: UM Festival

Hercules & love Affair's self titled debut (stream below on Spotify) came out of absolutely nowhere, and proceeded to blow people’s heads off the world over. Not in the sense of aggression, but in the sense of absolute quality - like ‘why aren’t all albums as good as this?’

It managed to marry the worlds of disco and house music, and yet didn’t sound like any machines had anything to do with it. How exactly does the amalgamation of two genres, one that only exists because of music technology and the other heavily indebted to it, sound so live and authentic?

One answer lies in the absolute stroke of genius, but, when you think about it, blindingly obvious, strategy of Hercules And Love Affair creator Andy Butler. He basically decided to collaborate with a load of different musicians but then allow them to have creative license over the songwriting and arrangement.

Butler had a strong enough hand on the tiller to make sure the album was a coherent piece of work, but you can really hear the improvisation and live-jam feel on all of the tracks. It’s like a classically trained interpretation of dance music where synthesisers, samplers and drum machines are replaced by conventional musical instruments and good ole’ fashioned musicianship.

And yet, club fiends all over the country – the kind that were flopping about in a daze to minimal techno in Ibiza the previous summer who would normally not give two shits about musicianship, old fashioned or not – they went for it.

And so did the broadsheet newspapers, NME, everyone – this album managed to appeal to the masses, but sound authentic and understandable to almost anyone who listened to it.

The first single from the album, ‘Blind’, even made the UK Top 40, which is an astonishing achievement when you consider the fairly crude electro house that was flying the flag for dance music in the charts at the time, from the likes of Dave Spoon, Armand Van Helden, Mason etc.

And lest we forget the remix by the late Frankie Knuckles. Rather in keeping with the whole story, the Godfather of US house rocking out progressive-tinged ambience took everyone completely by surprise.

For all the world it looked like ‘Blind’ was all about the pained vocals of Antony Hegarty from Antony And The Johnsons fame, but then Butler manages to surprise everyone again during Hercules’ highly successful tour off the back of the album by using a female vocalist, Nomi Ruiz, who absolutely nailed it during their live performances.

If you’ve never seen Hercules perform live then you absolutely must – they have the on-stage carnage of a Chic or a Kool And The Gang, where there are so many musicians they’re almost tripping over each other, but by God it works.

They're still very much alive as a live act, they've just released their third album, The Feast Of A Broken Heart and Andy Butler is prevalent on the DJ circuit... many opportunities to be educated!

The final thing to address in all this – and a question that many people had when they first heard the album – who on earth was Andy Butler? You could have been forgiven for assuming that he must have done a load of stuff before Hercules, but aside from the odd production credit here and there, he hadn’t done much at all.

He was a DJ by trade, on the New York scene, and it looks like his link to the big time was his co-producer on the album, Tim Goldsworthy, the one from DFA records that isn't James Murphy. 

Which makes the genius of the release al the more remarkable. It’s a brave call, but we would argue this is the finest work to ever come out of DFA.