[Photo credit to Louis Kerckhof, collage by Anohni]
Art Dance-inspired group Hercules and Love Affair are releasing their new album In Amber today, on Friday, June 17, 2022, via BMG. This is Andy Butler’s first Hercules album in 5 years and it sees him reuniting with Anohni for the first time since her work on their eponymous debut in 2008. In Amber takes on sounds of “atmospheric pop, jagged industrial textures, and ornate primeval folk”. The final album preview track “Dissociation” has also been released, an orchestral arrangement with vocals by Elin Ey.
Andy Butler comments on the track:
‘Dissociation’ is a song that speaks to the fatigue I have felt brought on by the both the distortion of self and simultaneous fracturing of a coherent, shared, real-time experience of life that technology and specifically, the insidious personal interjection of social media into our lives has produced. Sung by the delicately emotive voice of Elin Ey, the detachment and increasingly programmed self doubt and mistrust of what we see and read has created a collective need to ‘dissociate’ on some level. As I chime in the chorus, “I am here, I am here, reel me in, reel me in”, the possibility of human intervention seems possible and incredibly comforting.
The genesis of In Amber was a “long held desire to explore emotional fields outside of the well worn tropes in electronic music”. Butler looks within to find new ways of building community on the new album and addresses the many problems that modern life seems to continuously create.
