Hercules And Love Affair


(Copyright © 2006 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )

Hercules And Love Affair (2008) , 6.5/10
Sidetracked (2009), 3.5/10
Blue Songs (2011), 5/10
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(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".

(Copyright © 2006 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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