Andy's songs are unique creatures, capable of swaying clubs and festival crowds but also boasting a punctilious attention to orchestration and lyrical bite. This perfectionism began with his opening shot, the 2008 classic 'Blind', featuring his friend Antony "and the Johnsons" Hegarty on vocals, and continued through successive albums, including work with John Grant and Bloc Party's Kele Okereke. Hercules & Love Affair's third album, 'The Feast of the Broken Heart', appeared in Spring 2014 to gushing reviews. It was a tougher, more electronic beast than its predecessors, hinting at the direction Andy's solo material has headed. The man himself moved from Vienna to Gent last year and has been revelling in the influence of his new home. "It's a town with a rich dance music history, namely the beginnings of techno with r&s records, but there's lots of good stuff happening here now," he enthuses, "Soulwax, the Glimmers, Aeroplane, FCL like-minded dance music people. I've been sifting through classic industrial and New Beat music in record shops and picking up piles of vinyl. It's funny because I've now been clean-living almost two years so it's a bit weird and contradictory that I'm getting into harder music. In some ways my obsessiveness about music has kicked in and re- engaged..." Relaunching his own mr.intl imprint at the tail end of ‘14, Andy now has an outlet for solo releases and music he has discovered on his travels. DJs and producers from Vienna, Australia, Brazil and Iceland, for starters, the latter a band called Sisi Ey who are already making waves, coming on like a soulful reinterpretation of classic Kompakt Records fare. As well as these and his own material, he'll be re-releasing lost classics from the acid house and Belgian New Beat eras. Mr.intl, after all, was the label that had Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto remixing for them four years ago. An enemy of "filler sounds", Andy Butler has continued to push more outside of the boundaries musically and as a dj. It is a lifelong mission that's not going to stop any time soon. forthcoming gigs - http://gigs.gigatools.com/g/HerculesAndLoveAffair