Hercules and Love Affair

jaymc's tracklist is the same thing I've got

hehe, yep! I really can't believe how hackneyed the music in the original is.

now liveblog 3: the frankie knuckles mix

after 10 seconds of this I've decided a cup of tea would be more pleasing.

Listening to the whole album after a week of living (and liking a lot) with "Blind," it sounds ok to pretty good. I wish Frankie Knuckles had done the whole thing.

sometimes i wonder if you like big dumb hooks, ronan. it's really okay if you don't, but to call 'em hackneyed makes me say duh! really loudly at computer screen.

I love them! But I don't see the hooks in the original really...the music sounds like every discopunk/nu-disco trick of the last few years just slapped up.

Sounds more like straight-up disco tropes to these ears...

I think (maybe with some time, to echo arguments made elsewhere on ilm these days) that knuckles remix might stand out as one of the better things to come out of H&LA. in context, it's proper garage, done like no other nowadays. it's lush, the production is both restrained and faultless. and I agree that tune is impossibly catchy!

really liked the extended "athene", "roar" from the single was all right, as for the album I find it too contrivedly assembled but this is how I feel about half of everything, so. there are a hundred reasons to enjoy AND be annoyed by those songs, it's not happening as an indistinct and carefree experience for me at all, especially when it gets rightfully cerebral, away from the dancefloor. the last track is like a lost bumblebee record though right? that one's a keeper.

This really is fantastic, except for "True False, Fake Real" - I could easily live without that. Just too many cartoony sound effects for me.

-- jon /via/ chi 2.0

wtf, my evil twin

but "blind" when played in a club (and preferably the "club mix") just sounds like it has come from outer space. the vocal makes me feel how i imagine it would be to be on opium. so warm inside!

put so much better than I could have phrased it

I heard it out on sat. night (at that joakim/DFA thing I mentioned above), sounded great

dunno if opium makes you warm but it sure makes you horizontal.

Count me in with the 'not feeling it' camp - I liked the Frankie Knuckles track, really liked Blind but the rest of it was just so DULL. I dunno, it seems a bit late in the day for this sort of tasteful, earnest disco revivalism.

It also helped me crystallise a problem I've had with Italians Do It Better (which I really like a lot of). It seems a slightly blokey, nerdy version of italo, without the sense of silliness or vulgarity, and both of those are largely absent in the Hercules & Love Affair record as well. Like, I'm grateful to the crate-diggers who have kept this stuff alive and appreciated but I don't necessarily want all the fun bits, that might be seen as embarrasing, filed off as well.

"Hercules Theme" seems pretty playful and silly to me

yeah i don't find this particularly duller or staler sounding than anything else current, but i haven't heard the full album. think it's interesting that some like H&LA but not KP and some are the opposite - don't really understand either because I like both and tho they don't really sound alike they're fulfilling the same purposes for me. i guess they both often aim for pleasantness rather than intensity, dance-wise, which might put some off.

i think the new kelley polar is a grower. i like how it is sequenced.

so how close is the frankie knuckles remix to "the whistle song"? cuz that's smoooth.

seems like the general opinion here is quite divided. the H&LA i have heard definitely belongs on DFA cuz it has one foot each in the dance and rock camps. it's like there isn't enough of either though.

seems like it would work well in a mix a la fabriclive 36 though.

The club mix of Blind is tremendous, really brings the best out of Antony's vocals, like he's booming out over this huge sound system. Love it.

otm, the club mix brings much drama via the reverb knob. Excellent.

So far my First Quarter 2008 mix is just the whole Hercules and Love Affair record.

-- kenan, Friday, February 15, 2008 11:30 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

artwork for blind at dfa's myspace page. too lazy to upload it here.

Upload?

http://www.dfarecords.com/myspace/hercules/blind.jpg

errr ... post, i mean?

Frankie Knuckles remix here.

I love songs with this kind of structure, where everything is building up in the first few minutes to that "I feel blind" line.

Amazing Cover

I dunno, it seems a bit late in the day for this sort of tasteful, earnest disco revivalism.

nooooo I just got here!

I feel that same way about the sound of it and the percussion, but that's again, with "Blind" anyway, where having a quality song behind it makes the retro style work (as with "Crazy", as with The Strokes' first record, etc.).

OK, I've listened to "Blind" 20 times today. It's the harmonies on that "I feel blind" that get me each time (something that gets lost in the Frankie Knuckles remix), and the beat right after that where the horns come in and I imagine all the dry ice around the dance floor going whoooosh and all the shirts coming off.

yeah, the horns and how antony sings "i feel it" are my favorite parts of the song.

andy's also got a side project called love & loveless that's sounding really good. he played a couple tracks at the party we threw with him in december as well as on bis a few months ago

aaaahh i'm listening to it right now ... so satisfying. esp the last couple minutes

When the outro starts, is he saying "in movieland"? Like he's a blind man in movieland? What is this song about? Is it a diagnosis manifesto, like "Crazy"?

no i think he's just saying "mm-a-feelin' "

You may have abandoned this thread already Ronan, but you should listen to the first single with "Classique #2" and "Roar" as those two (Classique #2 in particular) sound a bit different than the album tracks I've heard. I prefer them.

Roar reminds me a bit of A Guy Called Gerald.

Off a couple of low key listens in my office, I'm really liking the album.

can a brother without enough net geek kudos to get an invite to any secret filesharing parties catch a PM'd break? anyone?

I'm sorry, what?

cant pick up a promo of the album, would like a r/share link to one and trying to dress it up a bit to not sound like a scummer

live show in london in june

And finally, as a thankyou for signing up to the mailing list, you're now among the first people to know about Hercules And Love Affair playing live! Tickets will go on sale exclusively to people on this list from 9am tomorrow, Tuesday March 4th, to see the full live band play at London's Soho Revue Theatre on June 3rd. They will cost £10 each, plus a booking fee, and are limited to 2 tickets per applicant. Only a limited amount will go on sale tomorrow then the rest will be on sale from 9am Wednesday March 5th. Click here from 9am tomorrow!

(That's a quote, btw)

got my tickets!

So have I!

This album is amazing. Can't believe it hasn't been mentioned how "You Belong" is a great reinterpretation of Inner City's "Good Life".

I still haven't heard the album, as I'm rather traditionally waiting to buy it before hearing it, but on the tracks I've heard, I think Matt's and others' criticisms of conservatism are fair enough. The "tastefulness" charge is also made in the afterword in Peter Shapiro's book, although aimed at an earlier wave of disco revivalists (specifically Daniel Wang, I seem to remember.) Taking the cheese and the sleaze and the glorious silliness out of disco could be missing the point or whatever.

However, this really doesn't trouble me here. It just seems like great music. That said, I haven't really contributed to my own thread because there doesn't seem to be much more to say beyond that. I think the fact that it looks like it's going to be a big success is interesting, to a degree. Like the tip of the iceberg in terms of popularity for all the disco stuff that's been going on.

you should listen to the first single with "Classique #2" and "Roar" as those two (Classique #2 in particular) sound a bit different than the album tracks

This is otm. I wasn't into that single at first, as it wasn't what I was expecting, but it's great.

"Hercules Theme" and "False Real, Fake True" are pretty silly I think. And the album as a whole is pretty daft compared to Chic or something.

As is "Iris" but in a really bad way--the album would be loads better w/out the few elecronica duffers clogging up the back half.

Has anyone heard the b-side? "Shadows," I think it's called?

"you belong" might be my favorite track on it now that I've had it a couple weeks, love the vocals

i think people who think this record is too serious are just taking it too seriously--i hear a ton of fun and cheese