Hercules & Love Affair is a unique group in the spectrum of dance music. Conceived and led by Denver DJ and producer Andy Butler, they are front runners in live house music and have been responsible for a number of seminal records including 2008’s ‘Blind’ (accompanied by a phenomenal remix from the late Frankie Knuckles) and 2011’s ‘My House’.
Recently signed by Defected Records and due for a full release later this year, their latest triumph is ‘Do You Feel The Same?’, an acid-house-meets-pop masterpiece from their lauded third studio album Feast Of The Broken Heart. Ahead of its release and of Hercules & Love Affair’s debut show at Glitterbox on Saturday 26 July, we caught up with Andy Butler to discuss how the group has evolved over the last eight years, and why he became so bored with ‘deep’ house.
You’re in the middle of a fairly extensive tour in support of the new LP, how are you finding it?
Some artists may be in a luxurious position to not have to do this, but for the most of us, it is our main source of income. It is also the most direct way of your music reaching people. I used to resent the fact that I had to tour so much. I kinda felt like a puppy being dragged on a leash. You know when they just won’t move? There were times where I would get on to a plane and just start crying. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I was just starting to become so emotionally overwhelmed with the concept of travel and playing music. It really wasn’t a great space to be in. Music has been something I do out of love and passion, and it was turning into something that was causing me suffering, although happily it’s not like that for me anymore.
After the release of your first album, you toured extensively with a full live band. Now that the live show has been paired back somewhat, is touring a little easier to manage?
That first tour – I was so ambitious and principled. I was like, “We are making dance music from scratch. We are not using samples. We are playing live instruments. It’s not about bringing a machine that will play a conga loop; I want a conga player!” But that means flights for the conga player, hotels for the conga player, feeding the conga player! I wish my manager at the time had been a bit more like, “You do realize that the next year of your life you will basically be running around the world and not making a cent – effectively losing money.” I think at the time I would have just been like, “It’s for the music man” [laughs].
I’m not so much like that now. Now I know what makes a good show. It’s not about having 15 people on stage. That show was a very special tour, but I think there are other ingredients to the mix that make a really tasty performance. Fortunately, my aesthetic just changed. I had been collecting disco records for like 12 years almost. I mean really records from pre-1987. Every now and then if I found an interesting house record, I would buy it, but basically throughout my 20s and late teens I was just buying 70s and 80s dance music or experimental weird stuff from a little earlier.
And then that changed. I was just so interested in chasing a sound that I didn’t grow up with, but that directly influenced the music that I did grow up with. All the samples on the house music that I grew up with in the 90s, I became obsessed with finding the originals, and I became obsessed with making original dance music. Then I started listening to old mixtapes – some old house records, and I just got really thrilled by it again. So that aesthetic shift transformed the live show immensely. All of a sudden I was ok with having a drum machine on stage that plays loops. I was ok with it being electronic – a proper dance music show – a big, slamming club sound. Now it means that I didn’t need as many players, and it doesn’t feel like a compromise either.
This aesthetic change is apparent in your new music, to me Feast of the Broken Heart sounds to me like the housiest thing you’ve ever made. Do you think that’s fair?
This new record started out in a completely different place to where it ended up. I started out with extremely artsy, lofty ambition and a totally different concept for the album. I had my heads in the clouds when I was making this record. Some of the earlier stuff that was supposed to be on the record was good, and I may pick the concepts back up, but basically I was making more ambient inspired, classic pop song structure – almost classic rock – meets ambient techno. It was a very different sound palette.
I was using a lot of spoken word samples; I was injecting a lot of feminist concepts into the work at first. I was looking at pioneering female electronic musicians like Wendy Carlos. I had this big lofty kind of idea of what the album was going to be. Then I made a really straight forward house track called ‘That’s Not Me’, and I was like, “Oh shit! This is fun. This is to the point.”
You said that you wanted this album to sound more aggressive than its predecessors. Where did that aggression come from? Were you pissed off at something?
Honestly, I was noticing that a lot of productions that were coming out that were sounding too polite, spun together Ableton compositions that kids were calling ‘deep house’. I was like, “God, that is boring.” It basically operates as minimal for me, but with a bit more shuffle. I would hear this stuff and think “what is it that is missing?” You can hear that these kids are listening to new records, but why do these tracks sound so whimpy? It became a matter of discussion in the studio with my co-producers. They come from Detroit techno, and asserted that I wanted grit. I’ve never been a fan of songs that all sound the same. Minimal is where it first really started to happen for me, and I started noticing it. I hate it when a whole genre of music or all these releases come out that sound like they came out of the same goddamn computer.
My engineers and co-producers really fucking worked it out. We bit reduced so much audio to make it crunchier and feel more authentic – make it sound louder and distorted. They really applied a lot of tricks, and we learned a lot of things to make that stuff sound as real as it does.
House is now significantly more popular in the mainstream than it was when you first started as Hercules & Love Affair. Do you think that is a good thing?
Absolutely. As a teenager I walked out of the world of playing the piano and learning how to notate music – the world of high art and legitimate forms of music – and into the world of the warehouse. I found so much satisfaction in this minimal, club orientated, super rhythmic and very provocative music. And I thought, you know what, this is legitimate music too. As a teenager, I was really frustrated with teachers, adults around me, people who looked and listened and focused on the four to the floor rhythm, this thumping kick drum and told me “This is shit. This is not real.”
Now dance music is legitimate. Disco is legitimate music; this was a big one. It was thrown away by popular culture, by the mainstream. It was considered crap; it was considered invalid. I felt the same way about house. So it was sort of like this mission that I had had from my teenage years to prove this was legitimate music.
It has been a long time coming, but it’s cool that it’s the dominant sound, and it’s cool that people are finding it. It’s cool that I play a track to a 65 year old woman with some nasty 909 kick drums and hi hats, and she’s like “This is cool.” I kinda think that is rad. My mom digs it.
I sampled this new-age, spiritualist thinker that I really love. She’s probably like 65 years old herself, and she gave me the rights to sampler her on this fucking brutal techno track. Our ears have finally warmed collectively to the sounds of electronic instruments, and we can listen to them now more seriously. It’s kind of a nice phenomenon, but with that comes a kind of watering down.
For sure, as soon as it becomes more mainstream, more people want to get involved in doing it, and with that you get a lot of the blandness you are talking about. So you need to dig deeper and be more selective, because there’s so much more music out there. But it's a nice position to be in...
Defected have kind of spearheaded this as well. Classic labels and the classic tunes are revived, and given the chance to be heard again. I think that is really brilliant.
Sometimes when I hear house music blaring out of a car or something, I look at the people in the car, and there have been times where I was like “wow, that is not who I would have thought would be listening to that.” It’s cool and on a deeper level it encourages tolerance. I think that the spirit that you find in the club can be transported out onto the street. I think psychologically it has an impact of promoting more tolerance and acceptance in people.
As Hercules and Love Affair you’re playing Glitterbox for us in Booom next weekend. Is Ibiza a place you get to much?
Not so much. I mean we’ve done various things. We played at the Dalt Villa – that was so cool, but I’m not that much of a regular. I have friends that live there. I’ve never had a season in Ibiza. If I can get out there, I like to. I tend to do it the quiet way though. As quiet as visiting the nude beaches can be. We are amped to participate in what I think will be the best party on Ibiza though. Defected has put together featuring a bunch of my heroes and friends so you can be sure we are going to bring a blazing show.
Ten years ago the concept of a live dance act was limited. Now that’s changed and there are a lot of performers who play some incarnation of ‘live’ or another. What do you think makes Hercules & Love Affair stand out?
We’ve cut our teeth on live dance music for seven or eight years now. As I said earlier, I kind of realized what makes an effective event or show. It doesn’t take fifteen people on stage, pyrotechnics or an insane level of production. What I think we bring is authenticity and absolute desire for us to be able to enjoy ourselves on stage. We are able to transmit a party.
Do you have fun when you are up there? You alluded to the fact that touring something of a necessary evil, but when you are actually performing, do you love it?
If I don’t love it, there is a problem that night. If I get off stage and 70% of me enjoyed it, then it wasn’t a great show. When that happens I talk to the singers. I have two of the most amazing regular performers with me. They know how to make it their own; they know how to dazzle you. I talk to them, and they often tell me, “The show was a brilliant. The audience loved it. You were just in your own space.”
When I’m 100%, it’s magic. I love the whole experience. I think we strive for that. The model before getting on stage is there is a group hug and prayer. Kind of like a Madonna-style moment, but I think we say our prayers a little bit more sincerely than Madonna I would imagine. Fun is the model. The reason you are on stage is to have fun. Yes, you are here to put on a show. Yes, you are here to sing some songs, but ultimately we are here because we fucking love this. We love music; we love house music. I think what makes us special is the ability to transmit this intense party vibe – an intense feeling of freedom and losing your inhibition. We have a strong message to deliver, and we also have some good songs to sing. I can take a little credit for that. Visually I think we are pretty compelling as well. It’s like that Inner City song: You don’t really need a crowd to have a party, we know how to do it.
Hercules & Love Affair will play live at Defected’s Glitterbox party at Booom Ibiza on the 26 July and 16 August - click for full info and tickets
A re-energised Club Mix of ‘Do You Feel The Same?’ will be released soon via Defected, with further remixes due out in the Autumn.
