Renowned for their exuberant stage show and Andy Butler's knack for elegant and timely productions, Hercules & Love Affair have - unconsciously - hit the zeitgeist with eleven songs that sparkle with faith and tolerance as a response to our troubling times.

“Sometimes songs are born out of an intense moment that has nothing to do with club music,”explains Hercules main man Andy Butler. “…I’m not just a "head" (read techno-head, house-head, disco-head)….I’m touched just as much by, say, Sinead O’Connor accompanied only by a guitar, singing an intensely spirited message.”

Helping Butler realise this new dynamic are a world class cast of singers including The Horrors’ Faris Badwan, the Arab World’s most influential indie band Mashrou’ Leila, New York singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten, and Icelandic sister act Sísý Ey, as well as regular collaborators Rouge Mary and Gustaph - and Butler himself on the intensely personal electro ballad ‘Fools Wear Crowns’. Having had “a massive, massive relationship with drugs and clubs” since his youth, culminating in “a brutal drug addiction that saw me overdosed in hospital every weekend”, ButIer has been clean for four years and ‘Omnion’ is rich with his re-immersion in the wider world, in all its ugliness and beauty.

‘Controller’, featuring Faris Badwan, is the album’s seamy ‘80s electro-house underbelly, with a sub-dom, master-and-servant subtext to Badwan’s lyric. Taking things back to the dance floor is upbeat industrial disco stomper ‘Rejoice’, featuring Hercules regular Rouge Mary. Rouge also joins Hamed Sinno of Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila, exchanging verses in Arabic on the graceful album standout ‘Are You Certain?’.

  • Watch the video for ‘Controller’ here.
  • Watch the video for ‘Omnion’ here.
  • Listen to ‘Rejoice’ here.

Raised in Denver Colorado where he cut his teeth as a teenage DJ, Butler escaped to New York, and forged Hercules & Love Affair as an outlet for his songs. From the retro-futurist Paradise Garage grooves of eponymous 2008 debut, with longtime friend ANOHNI on the classic, 'Blind', via thoughtful elegiac songwriting of 2011’s ‘Blue Songs’, to the bumping, grittier pulse of 2014’s ‘The Feast of the Broken Heart’ Butler has again nailed a body of work that bridges the dance floor and home listening. ‘Omnion’ moves his game up a notch and reflects his current “hypersensitivity to stuff going on. Sometimes the dance floor represents a decision to avoid dialogue with the wider world, to commune with people but not really talk, but humans need to challenge themselves and step it up. Not that everything has to be so serious but this Hercules record is.”

Tracklisting
1. Omnion (feat. Sharon Van Etten)
2. Controller (feat. Faris Badwan)
3. Rejoice (feat. Rouge Mary)
4. Are You Still Certain? (feat. Mashrou' Leila)
5. Running (feat. Sisy Ey)
6. Fools Wear Crowns
7. Lies (feat. Gustaph)
8. Wild Child (feat. Rouge Mary)
9. My Curse and Cure (feat. Gustaph)
10. Through Your Atmosphere (feat. Faris Badwan)
11. Epilogue (feat. Gustaph)

Live
1/12 Trix, Antwerpen

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