Hercules and Love Affair

Effectively the solo project of New York based DJ and producer Andy Butler, with the help of some interesting friends, Hercules and Love Affair is , unlikely though it sounds, the point where classic disco meets classical myth--the title apparently refers to the legendary hero's fondness for his own sex. Although co-produced by LCD Soundsystem's Tim Goldsworthy, Hercules and Love Affair is a flightier, more hedonistic proposition, filled with echoes of long gone clubs and ghosts of the pre-AIDS glory days of New York's gay scene. Yet it celebrates rather than mourns the past as a series of guest vocalists leave their mark, Antony Hegarty the most familiar. The terrific, irresistible single "Blind", reportedly some four years in gestation, stands out but the wistfully positive "Raise Me Up" isn't far behind, Hegarty's inimitably sad tones incongruously juxtaposed with a gleeful arrangement. Though even his voice has a hard battle with the lift from Frankie Knuckles's classic "Your Love" which underpins the opener "Time Will". The spaced out jazz of "This Is My Love", sung by Butler himself, the dizzily ecstatic house of "You Belong", the purest of flashbacks, and Kim Ann's vocal turn on the elegant "Athene" are other highlights on a remarkably assured and entertaining first effort. This year won't see a better example of danceable melancholy than Hercules and Love Affair. --Steve Jelbert

"all the sparkle and naughtiness that made disco oh-so-special"

"Brilliant...if Ziggy Stardust made house music, it would sound like this."

"Classic Chicago house with a modern-day New York vibe"

"A gorgeously burnished fusion of three decades of classic dance music, from disco to house, acid to synth pop, Derrick May to Giorgio Moroder"

"beautiful harmonies, incisive lyrics, and grown up grooves. BYO mirror ball."

Andrew Butler emerged from making music for college-based dance projects into a fully-fledged recording artist, via the New York art scene. He hooked up with his friends from there, including Nomi, Kim Ann and Antony and Hercules & Love Affair is the result.

Antony rose to prominence when he won 2005's Mercury Music Prize and this is a major step into a new area... a disco-influenced mix of glamour and melancholy, happiness and clubbing that has sprung out of the mutual worlds of Andrew and Antony, Kim Ann and Nomi.

Nomi is a native New Yorker who met Andrew at one of Antony's performances years ago. She has performed with the likes of Debbie Harry and Cocorosie alongside longstanding recording collaborations with various NY DJs and hip hop artists. Her autobiographical debut album `Lost In Lust' has been compared to a cross between Wu-Tang Clan's RZA on beats and Sade on vocals. Here Nomi lends her voice to the seductive `You Belong'.

Brooklyn-based Kim Ann Foxman's career as acid-house DJ, jewellery designer and singer has its roots in the legendary San Francisco club scene of the early/mid-nineties. Shortly after her move to NYC, she started throwing dance music/art parties and gave Andrew his first residency that lasted 3 years. He in turn provided her with her first pair of turntables, which led her to start DJ'ing. They have been regular collaborators ever since, engaging in art activities of all sorts and seeing her become part of NYC's nightlife glitterati with a distinct vocal style. Check out 'Athene' to hear her in full swing...

Hercules & Love Affair is 2008's most exciting dancefloor concoction, an arthouse vision of pure pop by way of futuristic electronica and classic dance music, where beautiful, bruising harmonies and tensile rhythms collide in resurgent soundscapes and emotive disco workouts.

The album is co-produced by Andrew Butler with Tim Goldsworthy of DFA at Plantain Studios in the midst of Manhattan, New York City.

1978 was a pivotal year in the evolution of dance music. Saturday Night Fever had hijacked disco from the gay, black and Latino underground scene and turned it into a strutting global pop phenomenon spurring DJs like Frankie Knuckles in Chicago and Larry Levan in New York to push the expansive, electronic dreams of Gorgio Moroder (I Feel Love) and Walter Gibbons (Ten Percent) towards what would eventually become House and Garage.

1978 was also the year that Andy Butler was born. Exactly 30 years later, with a little help from his vocalist friends Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons), Kim Ann Foxman and Nomi, Andy is reviving the spirit of real disco and the house sounds it spawned with enough passion and finesse to ignite both the underground and the pop world all over again.

In its name, sound and romantic, heroic spirit, Hercules And Love Affair is the result of Andy's dedication to the Classics: both the myths and legends of Ancient Greece and Rome that captured his imagination as a child, and the timeless club tracks that soundtracked the euphoria and delirium of his adolescence and adult life.

Born in Denver, Colorado, Andy was already composing modern classical pieces on the family piano when, aged 12, he had his first mind-blowing encounter with electronic dance music in the shape of Yazoo's 1982 Vince Clarke produced b-side Situation.

Inspired to share his new musical passion, at 15 Andy got a DJing gig in a gay bar and soon encountered DJ Garth of Wicked Crew, a San Francisco-based soundsystem set up by Brit ex-pat members of DJ Harvey & co's legendary London rave collective, Tonka Soundsystem.

At 18, Andy followed his head and his heart and left Denver to study music and art history at the private liberal Sarah Lawrence College in Manhattan and applied nocturnal mischief at New York's innumerable nightclubs. His first studio experiments included a Kraftwerk-inspired interpretation of Canadian disco don Gino Soccio's Runaway for Rashaun Mitchell, now principal dancer in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, to perform to.

In 2002 Andy met DJ, singer and jewellery designer Kim Ann Foxman, who having escaped from Hawaii to San Francisco as a teenage tearaway had also fallen under the influence of the Tonka / Wicked Crew DJs eclectic house evangelism.

Together they formed a loose DJing and promotion partnership, DanceHomosDance. Inspired by London's Horse Meat Disco, Andrew launched Cazzo Pazzo where big name House DJs could show off their disco knowledge in an intimate venue. Kim also got Andy to play at her notorious mixed club night, Mad Clams at The Hole.

Among the many club creatures, party people, artists and musicians Andy encountered in the downtown scene was the enigmatic figure of Antony.

Pairing the inherently happy-go-lucky sounds of disco and house with Antony's evocative, far reaching, spirited vocals adds great depth and complexity without diminishing the draw toward the dancefloor. Rarely has club music resonated with such emotionally intensity.

On album opener, Time Will, Antony's longing cry rides a sensuous electric bass riff that evokes Frankie Knuckles & Jamie Principle's peerless Your Love; on disco-fuelled lead single, Blind (now remixed by Frankie himself) and Raise Me Up his love for the apocalyptic disco of Savoy Records and the experimental synthpop of Princess Tinymeat becomes clear; and on the tribal, Quaalude-paced Easy his multi-layered voice drops several octaves to sound like a Greek Oracle, prophetic and omniscient.

Hercules' third siren (fourth if you include Andy's lead vocals on This Is My Love) is Nomi, a sultry 24-year-old native New Yorker who is usually to be found injecting urban sass into Coco Rosie's alt-folk revue and Debbie Harry's latest solo LP or singing her own neo-soul compositions over RZA-inspired minor chord loops.

Citing Mary J, Sade and Lauryn Hill as her vocal inspirations, it's hard to see where she fits into the Hercules mix, but on hearing the punchy Acid House tune You Belong, all becomes clear. Her deep, blues tone is a powerful evocation of Yazoo-era Alison Moyet.

As is so often the case in NYC's linked-in music circle, the final piece of the puzzle was the DFA connection. Blown away by what they heard they offered him a deal and Murphy's LCD Soundsystem partner Tim Goldsworthy swiftly volunteered himself for co-production duties to give a sprinkling of magic LCD dust.

Hercules And Love Affair will touch you in a way no other record will do in 2008. It encapsulates the high and lows of modern life, references the past but lays a blueprint for what's to come and above all makes your heart beat faster while your soul soars higher. Hercules & Love Affair are the coolest kids on the block; the future beamed straight to your turntable direct from New York City.