Hercules & Love Affair

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Disco is NOT Dead
I think this is the best dance record for 2008, and of course the year is young but I'll stick to those words. Andy Butler has teamed up with Antony Hegarty to create a lovely dance record. The production is excelent, everything has a purpose and fits well. Even the touch of not using synth brass is a nice touch. This record is proof disco is NOT dead. I highly recommend all of the remixes, especially the Frankie Knuckles remix of "Blind" - just mind blowing.

I can look outside myself
I first heard of Hercules & Love Affair via a Goldfrapp remix that they did of the song "A&E." A pleasant remix, and it led me to ferret out their debut album. Well don't expect to be blown away by Hercules & Love Affair's self titled debut. While it has some clever, striking moments, this album is mostly repetitive mellow beats, solid vocals from a much-beloved singer, and some pleasant flourishes around the edges. It's not a bad album by any means, but it's a bit too easy to daydream during many of the songs. It opens with a thick drum being tapped, snapping fingers, and the stern command, "Don't lie to me/don't make it up," before the song melts into a tangle of twisted synth, gentle electro beats and a warm, thick layer of keyboard like drizzled honey. This is probably the high point of the whole album. Then things slump with "Hercules' Theme," an electrofunky tune riddled with horns and electric violins -- which sounds promising until you realize that the entire tune is running on a treadmill. And that continues into the songs that follow -- breathy hip-hoppy techno, blippy dance music, delicate electronica smothered by unspeakably melodramatic singing, sparkly electropop, and finally finishing with the joyously cluttered finale "True False Fake Real." Too bad the whole album wasn't like that last song -- colourful, unpredictable and profoundly odd. It's worth noting that "Hercules & Love Affair" is not a terrible album -- not even really a bad one, and there are some truly gorgeous moments like "Easy," a darkly twisting little number that left me craving lots more. And it's graced with plenty of jazzy secondary instrumentation. But the music tends to be quite repetitive -- "Athene" seems to endlessly run through the same few hard beats, as does the drippy island-y "You Belong" and the uneasily retro-funky "Raise Me Up." Hard beats, warm organic beats, tinkly ethereal ones, and all dressed in waves of synth, airy ripples, blares of horn, and lots of electric violin -- it gives a bit of extra flavour to the dancy songs. Antony Hegarty's (of Antony and the Johnsons) powerful voice is present in some of the melodies, but frankly he feels misplaced there -- his rich vocals sound like they're overflowing over the songs' sides, especially since they never change around him. Kim Ann Foxman's droning she-robot singing fits in far better. "Hercules and Love Affair" is basically a rather ordinary dance album strung with some truly exquisite flourishes around the edges. Here's hoping for something even better next time.

love affair
I just have to say that anything with Antony in it and/or produced by any of the DFA dudes (Murphy-Goldsworthy) has to be good. I have this album and it blew me away, I was expecting some techno-electronic stuff, but oh! the sweetness of the 70's beats, the horns, the vocals (Antony is surreal in Blind), everything just blends in and compliments each other in pure bliss. At times it has the feeling of being an album by The Knife (tracks 1, 6, 7 ), but then it brings in some fantastic disco infused electronica as well (2, 9) and of course the fantastic Blind... I really like the way Antony's voice enhances the beats... this is a true love affair.