Hercules and Love Affair

Music rules the party

Everything new is well forgotten old. This phrase accurately describes the debut album of electronic project Hercules And Love Affair. Overall, the record looks sufficiently unusual and it could be even called innovative, although the entire essence of it consists in usage of disco music common truths. Well yes, probably, hearing this, many of those who crave for the moment when music will finally break out from the clutches of meddlesome commercialism, will sniff scornfully. Disco is not that path that leads to freedom, especially today when this genre is living through its second life in major industry. But still, Hercules And Love Affair is something different. Let's put it like this – disco under editorship of this band is trying to shake off all that cheap glamour, which became available for housewives and questionable participants of numerous "we will make you a star" TV shows. They offer a more intricate product. Disco of Hercules And Love Affair is not an attribute of mainstream; quite on the contrary, it is the music that rules the party and club air comes as a supplement.

Hercules And Love Affair is hard to define

Definite assertion concerning this or that record sometimes looks as a peculiar marker of how strong this record is afflicted with standards. Or to be more precise of how much the author is afflicted with standards. The main paradox of Hercules And Love Affair is that it is hard to make a definite assertion even despite that fact that the standards are lying on the surface. You don't have to look far. Here we have that famous disco beat and octave-stepping bass and even typical dizzying violins. However, the general atmosphere is simply deprived of any cheap sweetness or artificial bombast. A cold aloofness so characteristic to electronic music presents here much more evidently. It all seems like the main intention of Hercules And Love Affair is to present disco atmosphere in its primary condition. In that very state when this music was young and independent from sales levels. Hercules And Love Affair has enough of what you may call an artistic form searching. You can easily trace some signs of early house or rudiments of lounge.

A state of relaxing trance

Not everything on this album can be called dance music in the direct sense of this phrase. Roughly speaking, nobody ask you to start dancing when you hear the first seconds of a track called Hercules Theme, it all sounds more like they want to bring you into a state of relaxing trance. You can go dancing if you want but it's not that important here. Of course, disco remains a dominating element on this album but the dance stereotype it always caries stands slightly aside in this case. Particularly the very first track Time Will sounds like an acoustic version of a dance song, it is weird, stripped but sufficiently attractive. And Iris, in its turn, represents a slowed down and really lazy variant. A special attention must be paid to vocals. Perhaps it is that very component that helps Hercules And Love Affair to disarm some clichés. One of the most interesting tracks of the album is called Blind. The song was recorded in collaboration with Mercury Music Awards winner Antony Hegarty. His voice adds a sensitive and very tragic feel to happy and careless atmosphere of arrangement. Such a combination creates a deep and even nostalgic air, which is so unusual for dance floor hits of both past and present. Overall, Hercules And Love Affair is intelligent, interesting and pretty original dance album. It is not a masterpiece but it is something you can get along with if this music won't scare you away of course.