12:14:00 AM
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February 09 2017
HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR RETURNS WITH NEW SINGLE “CONTROLLER” FEATURING FARIS BADWAN!
STREAM/BUY: https://WarnerMusicCanada.lnk.to/CONTROLLERPR
“Hercules & Love Affair last released an album in 2014, with
the emotional The Feast of the Broken Heart. Today, the project has
returned with The Horrors's singer Faris Badwan for the steamy
‘Controller.’” – The FADER
Hercules & Love Affair return to the fray with “Controller”, a pulsing, propulsive new song that signals the first salvo from their long-awaited new album. Featuring The Horrors’ Faris Badwan on vocals, it takes the Hercules’ disco-house heritage and fuses it with starker post-punk stylings.
“Recently I’ve been aesthetically interested in the raw
experimentation of early 80s electronic dance outside the glossier new
wave pop music we know from the time,” admits head honcho Andy Butler,
“Cabaret Voltaire, lots of noisier older music. It's funny that I ended
up in Belgium, considering all of the music that came from here – Front
242, Telex, and so on.”
“When I became aware of music, aged around 12, I was listening to the
Jesus & Mary Chain, Cocteau Twins, Ministry, “ he recalls, “That
was my formative music, the college album charts, what became alt-rock.
I found I could relate to this outsider music, stuff that wasn’t pop- I
already had a love for Yazoo and Depeche Mode which got me into
synthesizers. It was a rebellious, angst-ridden period and I was an
industrial goth kid, stockings and make-up, which then dovetailed into
the whole grindcore extreme stuff. But at 15 I heard LFO’s
‘Frequencies’ and was like whoa-- I walked away from vocal music
initially, walked away from that aggression towards psychedelic utopia
and acid house…”
With ‘Controller’ he’s reconnected. He knew he wanted a male voice
for the song "a vocalist who flirted with the darkness, someone who had a
touch of an Ian Astbury or Andrew Eldritch about them, or even of Ian
Curtis.”
In London, working with fashion designer James Long, Andy came across The Horrors’
live version of Frankie Knuckles & Jamie Principle’s seminal
Chicago house cut ‘Your Love’. He realized he’d found his voice, a rock
artist willing to engage with dance culture's history.
“Controller” is the result, a contagious song
containing a hint of seamy ‘80s electro-pop underbelly, but also
recalling edgy early house records by the likes of Lil Louis and Bam
Bam. And then there’s the whole sub-dom, master-and-servant thing going
on in the lyrics…
“That’s a fair assessment,” Andy laughs, “but actually the new album
is a lot about spirituality. Faris was happy to engage with that. He
went into the recording booth, would come out with something, and I’d
say, “Did you just sing, ‘I love what you’re making me do’?” He’d say,
“No, but that sounds cool.” That’s how the song was made, it unfolded
out of an unconscious process. It’s about being used by a higher entity
but there’s this second layer which is a play on intense sub-dom sexual
roleplay!”
As raunchy and contentious as it is catchy, ‘Controller’ is the first
single from Hercules’s fourth album on which they consolidate this
sonic palette yet further, while never losing sight of their following
on the dance floor. Details to be announced soon…..
Connect with Hercules & Love Affair:
http://herculesandloveaffair.net/
