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Live Review: Sylvan Esso 'H.S.K.T' (Hercules & Love Affair remix)

3 June 2015 | 10:00 am | Katie Rowley

Hercules & Love Affair. Remember them? 2008’s finest nu-disco dance music project. Well, they're back with a thoughtful little remix of indie pop duo Sylvan Esso’s track, ‘H.S.K.T’.

Sylvan-Esso-purple-sneakers

HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR. Remember them? 2008’s finest nu-disco dance music project and experimental brainchild of American DJ Andy Butler. Well, Hercules & Love Affair have emerged again with a thoughtful little remix of indie pop duo Sylvan Esso’s track, ‘H.S.K.T’.

The original was a bouncy digital hoedown (what with the ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ hook), and the remix has been hit with a dollop of unsettling haunting eeriness; a departure from the poppy disco vibes of the initial Hercules agenda. The slow and steady beat builds into a series of bleeps and vox, which really bring a focus to Amelia Meath’s lyrics whilst maintaining a nod to Nick Sanborn’s original production style.

Meath’s folk background informs her writing. Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to deciphering what the acronym stands for, but Meath has said that the track ‘was originally written about Miley Cyrus. I wrote it the day that the MTV Music Awards performance aired. I was imagining that she was navigating her sexuality in front of America, experimenting with it’.

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The sound in both the original track and the Hercules & Love Affair version is distinctly digital, constructed by and for the computer age, creating an auditory reflection of Meath’s intention for the song to ‘touch on how people spend so much of their time being reflected back through their online personality’.

There’s a real sense of motion that’s been added into the remix, which for me seems to echo the corporeal and visceral elements of Meath’s lyrics. The staccato blippy shards of synth and cut up fractured beats that Hercules has remastered, oomph on incessantly and drive the body into movement.

The H.S.K.T Remix EP (a collection of extended mixes, acapellas, instrumentals and remixes) is out now on digital, and will be released on physical 12” on August 21 via Partisan Records.

Words by Katie Rowley

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