Hercules and Love Affair
Box 1
Besides the exploration of a new operatic expression in the chamber opera, our repertoire is focused on the contemporary opera and its influence on the modern art. Discover the best performers and plays.
Box 2
Besides the exploration of a new operatic expression in the chamber opera, our repertoire is focused on the contemporary opera and its influence on the modern art. Discover the best performers and plays.
Box 3
Besides the exploration of a new operatic expression in the chamber opera, our repertoire is focused on the contemporary opera and its influence on the modern art. Discover the best performers and plays.
Box 1
Besides the exploration of a new operatic expression in the chamber opera, our repertoire is focused on the contemporary opera and its influence on the modern art. Discover the best performers and plays.
Box 2
Besides the exploration of a new operatic expression in the chamber opera, our repertoire is focused on the contemporary opera and its influence on the modern art. Discover the best performers and plays.
As Hercules and Love Affair, Andy Butler has long made music that sounds gloriously out of step with the present moment—drawing from the rich past of electronic music while pushing his work to new, unexplored vistas. In Amber, the fifth Hercules and Love Affair album and first in five years, represents the largest leap forward yet for Butler’s long-running project. A shocking break from the lush dance music of records past, “In Amber” is an up-close-and-personal statement that encompasses atmospheric pop, jagged industrial textures, and ornate primeval folk. It’s an album that stares uncertainty straight in the face, the most fearless music that Butler’s put together to date. “In Amber” is the follow up to 2017’s critically acclaimed Omnion, and it reflects a new state of mind for Butler—both holistically and geographically, as he moved to the Belgian city of Ghent several years ago. “I started to have a more quiet life,” he reflects, and his listening habits broadened as a result of the new environment, as Butler started exploring “heavier sounds” and more somber textures found in the Crammed Discs catalog, Flemish avant-garde composer Wim Wertens, and the seminal post-punk label Les Disques du Crépuscule.
“I had a deeper appreciation for the moody, beautiful, poetic, and punky nature of Belgian music in the ‘80s,” he explains. Informed by archaic folk and primitivism alike, “In Amber” swings wide in gentle and heavy extremes—the latter aspect a result of Butler drawing from the creative energy of in-progress work with long time collaborator Mark Pistel. After amassing some demos, he sent the tunes to the singular artist ANOHNI, who last lent her pipes to the Hercules and Love Affair world on the project’s meteoric 2008 self-titled debut. “She heard them and immediately responded really positively,” Butler recalls. “She said, ‘I think we should try something over this.’ It didn’t take me much consideration, I knew her voice would be amazing against these intense tracks.”
Ultimately, “In Amber” finds Butler digging deep within to find new ways of building community—of stretching out of his comfort zone and searching for new solutions to the many problems that modern life seems to continuously create. “There’s an optimism that people in subcultures strive for,” he says while talking about the album’s aims. “Dance music has this amazing ability to bring people together for one night. There’s an almost holy communion that can be felt. This record’s about bringing those conversations into the daytime. The work has to be done outside of the nightclub, too.”