more from
mr.intl
We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Omnion - the album

by Hercules & Love Affair

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      £9 GBP  or more

     

1.
Omnion Are you there? Can you hear my voice tonight? If I am your child Why have you put so much in my life to fight Over the years my heart had hardened The pain had been great I'm not the man People used to see Omnion Are you there I want to be the best man That I can be Can you help Can you help from beyond? Omnion when will I smile? Right now it's hard to see my right to joy Do you have a place for me? It's what I've wanted since I was a boy Now it's more than ever Now i need the love Omnion Are you there? I need to know there's nothing To be scared of So Can you help Can you help from beyond
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

about

PITCHFORK - "Some of the best Dancefloor experimentation in years"

THE GUARDIAN - "Musical Euphoria" 4/5

MOJO 4/5 "…Omnion doesn’t stint on sleek percolating rhythms….as ever Butler weaves these disparate ups and downs without visible joins.."

MIXMAG 8/10 "Omnion is a serious, grown up dance record for serious times. Let’s dance"

STEREOGUM (Album Of The Week) - "This whole album has an absolute f***ing snap to it!"


Renowned for their exuberant stage show and Andy Butler's knack for elegant and timely productions, Hercules & Love Affair have - unconsciously - hit the zeitgeist with eleven songs that sparkle with faith and tolerance as a response to our troubling times.

“Sometimes songs are born out of an intense moment that has nothing to do with club music,” explains Hercules main man Andy Butler. “…I’m not just a "head" (read techno-head, house-head, disco-head)….I’m touched just as much by, say, Sinead O’Connor accompanied only by a guitar, singing an intensely spiritedmessage.”

Helping Butler realise this new dynamic are a world class cast of singers including The Horrors’ Faris Badwan, the Arab World’s most influential indie band Mashrou’ Leila, New York singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten, and Icelandic sister act Sísý Ey, as well as regular collaborators Rouge Mary and Gustaph - and Butler himself on the intensely personal electro ballad ‘Fools Wear Crowns’. Having had “a massive, massive relationship with drugs and clubs” since his youth, culminating in “a brutal drug addiction that saw me overdosed in hospital every weekend”, ButIer has been clean for four years and ‘Omnion’ is rich with his re-immersion in the wider world, in all its ugliness and beauty.

The title track ‘Omnion' is “a childlike dialogue with a higher entity voiced through the filter of a broken adult male” – and features vocals from Sharon Van Etten. In turn, Butler recently remixed Van Etten’s single ‘Not Myself, a heart wrenching response to the Orlando Pulse Club massacre.

‘Controller’, featuring Faris Badwan, is the album’s seamy ‘80s electro-house underbelly, with a sub-dom, master-and-servant subtext to Badwan’s lyric. Taking things back to the dance floor is upbeat industrial disco stomper ‘Rejoice’, featuring Hercules regular Rouge Mary. Rouge also joins Hamed Sinno of Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila, exchanging verses in Arabic on the graceful album standout ‘Are You Certain?’.

Raised in Denver Colorado where he cut his teeth as a teenage DJ, Butler escaped to New York, and forged Hercules & Love Affair as an outlet for his songs. From the retro-futurist Paradise Garage grooves of eponymous 2008 debut, with longtime friend ANOHNI on the classic, 'Blind', via thoughtful elegiac songwriting of 2011’s ‘Blue Songs’, to the bumping, grittier pulse of 2014’s ‘The Feast of the Broken Heart’ Butler has again nailed a body of work that bridges the dance floor and home listening. ‘Omnion’ moves his game up a notch and reflects his current “hypersensitivity to stuff going on. Sometimes the dance floor represents a decision to avoid dialogue with the wider world, to commune with people but not really talk, but humans need to challenge themselves and step it up. Not that everything has to be so serious but this Hercules record is.”

credits

released September 1, 2017

license

all rights reserved

tags

If you like Hercules & Love Affair, you may also like: