Hercules & Love Affair, the divine disco/house group led by producer Andy Butler with regular collaborators Rouge Mary and Gustaph, are returning with their fourth album Omnion later this year (September 1). Like all Herc albums, Omnion boasts an enviable range of guest vocalists including The Horrors’ Faris Badwan, US singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten, and Iceland’s Sísý Ey. Following the release of “Controller” earlier this year, the band have now shared the second single from the album, its Sharon Van Etten-featuring title track “Omnion”. As Andy Butler explains, the song is “an appeal to the divine for help and healing.”
Its video, directed by film and photography collective Crown & Owls, tells an abstract ascension narrative with occult overtones. “The ‘Omnion’ video is an exploration of the nuances of gender and sexuality,” the directors say. “A story of rebirth, the video follows a lone figure in red ascending a seemingly infinite staircase. Perspective play, scale, and negative space is used to reflect the complexity of identity. It was a pleasure to work so closely with Andy and draw on his love of the theatrical set design of Robert Wilson and combine it with our interest in minimalism and surrealism.”
“Crowns & Owls have created a rich cinematic video for ‘Omnion’, a song really dear to my heart,” Butler adds. “It has such splendour due to intense set builds and carefully considered casting and styling by the amazing Anna Pesonin. The timeless story of a spirit reborn is told in an original and nuanced way, with an opaqueness and mystery that’s in contrast to the heavy-handedness by which so much of pop culture is often relayed.”
Hercules & Love Affair are going to head on tour this autumn, tickets for which go on sale this Friday (July 21).
Watch the video for “Omnion” above.
