1978 was a pivotal year in the evolution of dance music. Saturday Night Fever had hijacked disco from the gay, black and Latino underground scene and turned it into a strutting global pop phenomenon spurring DJs like Frankie Knuckles in Chicago and Larry Levan in New York to push the expansive, electronic dreams of Gorgio Moroder (I Feel Love) and Walter Gibbons (Ten Percent) towards what would eventually become House and Garage.

1978 was also the year that Andy Butler was born. Exactly 30 years later, with a little help from his vocalist friends Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons), Kim Ann Foxman and Nomi, Andy is reviving the spirit of real disco and the house sounds it spawned with enough passion and finesse to ignite both the underground and the pop world all over again.

In its name, sound and romantic, heroic spirit, Hercules And Love Affair is the result of Andy’s dedication to the Classics: both the myths and legends of Ancient Greece and Rome that captured his imagination as a child, and the timeless club tracks that soundtracked the euphoria and delirium of his adolescence and adult life.

Born in Denver, Colorado, Andy was already composing modern classical pieces on the family piano when, aged 12, he had his first mind-blowing encounter with electronic dance music in the shape of Yazoo’s 1982 Vince Clarke produced b-side Situation. It changed his life: “The delayed synth hook made me crazy and Alison Moyet's deep voice made me crazier. I figured that was what music in heaven sounded like. It made my hair stand on end.”

Inspired to share his new musical passion, at 15 Andy got a DJing gig in a gay bar and soon encountered DJ Garth of Wicked Crew, a San Francisco-based soundsystem set up by Brit ex-pat members of DJ Harvey & co’s legendary London rave collective, Tonka Soundsystem. “I was used to hearing DJs matching beats and playing good music of the moment, but Wicked would drop totally unexpected things, records that most DJs wouldn’t dare to play. Garth was fearless, he could get away with it, it just worked. I became a Wicked groupie.”