(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Hercules And Love Affair,
the brainchild of New York's producer Andrew Butler, twisted the tradition
of funk and disco of the 1970s in the single
Classique #2 (2007),
a rather skeletal track that is mostly made of a convoluted syncopated beat
and of wordless female vocals,
whose retro Roar had a more stable (Caribbean-tinged) beat and catchy vocal effects.
The album Hercules And Love Affair (DFA, 2008) pivoted around
effervescent dance jams such as Hercules Theme
(fueled by the horns and tempo of the jump blues of the 1950s),
Athene (much more propulsive, despite the alienated chanting),
Raise Me Up (an operatic hymn with bluesy trumpet and carillon-like keyboards),
True False (the most direct tribute to pre-rock vocal harmonies and also
the most orchestral track),
Blind (the most propulsive of the batch, a
Giorgio Moroder-esque locomotive),
and This Is My Love (overflowing with surreal detours, including
a jazzy trumpet and psychedelic keyboards) that injected a childish optimism
imto a genre that had been largely hijacked by the neo-existentialist crowd
(LCD Soundsystem and the likes).
Outside the format of the floorshaking groove, Butler penned the
soul ballad Time Will and the eerie, shamanic mantra Easy.
There was much to be admired in Hercules And Love Affair's attempt at
recasting disco-music as an idiom of the 2000s.
Sidetracked (2009) is a disco mix.
The double-disc
Blue Songs (Moshi Moshi, 2011), featuring vocalist
Kele Okereke (of Bloc Party) on some songs, was a rather uninspired follow-up
with way too much fluff including the aimless single "My House".
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