“I started the same way I always do, experimentation and exploration with the gear in front of me. I was working with this Austrian co-producer who had this really beautiful private studio, so private that the only thing this place had been used for before was their own stuff,” says Butler.
The Feats Of The Broken Heart is a dark, tumultuous house experience, a decision not clear to Butler from the start. “I toyed with all these modular analogue synths, making these arty ambient soundscapes for three months and then went the other way and made this very direct track That’s Not Me. So we got a local vocalist in. Her sound just set us on a really different course again. It clicked that we could craft these very poppy, structured songs but with a tough, gritty house backing.”
“It sounds like I’m very self-aware about my process but really I’m not removed enough to say ‘I’m going to do a new spin on this famous house track or copycat this’. It all starts with a simple chord progression and flows on, and it taps into a personal memory bank which is where a lot of the sounds come from. I started writing and playing music from a very young age, and having left the world of learning the piano and “higher art” I wanted to prove that electronic music, particularly house music was worthwhile.”
Listening to Hercules, it’s clear more is going on than simple homage to the heyday of disco. “It’s been something of an agenda for me because disco and house are almost treated like throwaway music, something for a very specific time and place, but I think it stretches far beyond that and has a real lifestyle and is legitimate.”
Of the festivals they’re invited to, Hercules gets shoved in with more mainstream club producers, and was last touring in Australia playing Future Music Festival in 2012. Andy has some strong thoughts, on the EDM craze. “The nicest way to put it is, I’m not a fan. I think the best composers know how to challenge themselves and while we all have a toolbox to draw on now and then, this is just the same cheap tricks repeated: all about the drop, the over-compression and the peaking. I’ve got nothing against aggressive music but it makes me feel like I’m insane, listening to it.
“As much as Skrillex might be a nice person, I don’t understand his musical mission.”
BY SIMON DONNES
