Music Review: Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair

Written by Tío Esqueleto

Disco is not dead. Just because a bunch of stoner (yet somehow aggressive) rockers from Chicago blew up a pile of Bee-Gees/K.C. and The Sunshine Band/Gloria Gaynor records in 1979, doesn’t necessarily make it so. Disco simply went into hiding after that. It went on vacation to Europe, spent some time hiding out in the warehouses and lofts of NYC, and in the bedrooms, house parties, and high schools of Detroit, until it eventually emerged stronger than ever, ironically and all too fittingly, right back in Chicago, a place it has called home (“House”) ever since.

Jump to 2008, Hercules And Love Affair is a collaborative effort headed by New York DJ/producer Andrew Butler, with Antony (of Antony and The Johnsons), Kim Ann Foxman, and Nomi, lending vocals and guidance along the way. This self-titled first album celebrates all things dance music, and is a travelogue through disco’s rarely chronicled, underground sabbatical.

A few tracks worth mentioning are, first off and rather appropriately, “Hercules Theme,” a sexy Donna Summer-inspired ditty, doused with sweat, laden with frantic, funky brass and dripping with intensity. The music evokes images of the sexy dancing poppies from The Wiz (you have your imagination and I have mine!), while the lyrics are a simple, repeated chant detailing the recent accolades of the would-be demi-god it was penned for.

Next, Nomi shines on “You Belong,” a love letter of sorts to Detroit’s Inner City, an outfit founded by Detroit techno pioneer Kevin Saunderson in the mid ‘80s. Insert this track anywhere in their seminal 1989 album, Paradise, and one would be hard pressed to pick out the imposter.

Songs like “Blind,” the album’s first single, and “Raise Me Up” are post cards from disco’s European vacation, in particular its prolonged stops in Italy and Germany throughout the early to mid 1980s where the music relied a bit less on the organic, and a bit more on the electronic with sequencers taking center stage, setting it apart from its American counterparts at the time. Classics such as “Magnifique” and the Italo classic, “Come On Closer” by Pineapples instantly come to mind. Throw in Antony’s vocals, which here are less his usual contempoarary Boy George croon and more like accompaniment to classic Giorgio Moroder, and the picture is complete. Had I not heard of Antony and The Johnsons first, I would have assumed this Antony was an underground God, graciously lending his voice, getting one more go-around at a hit 12”. Honestly, and I’ll say it again, all I could think was Pineapples’ “Come on Closer.”

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