Hercules & Love Affair Releases New Video for "My Journey"

Hercules & Love Affair today shares the official video for “My Journey” feat. Hips & Lips, a deeply personal meditation on transformation and the courage it takes to step beyond the life prescribed for you and become who you truly are. The track appears on Danseur PT 1, the first installment of Andy Butler’s two-part Danseur EP, out now via Stratasonic Records.

Directed by Miguel Rodriguez and starring Stephen Smith, Kaleb “KABO” Jacobs and Leandra Atenea Levine Hidalgo, the film gives the song’s story of coming out a visual world of its own, tracing the fear and uncertainty of transformation alongside the freedom of self-discovery and the realization that the journey does not have to be faced alone.

Across Danseur, Butler tells a series of deeply personal stories drawn from LGBTQ life. The songs move from the earth-shaking coming out depicted in “My Journey” to the tragic yet hopeful narrative of “The Eyes of Love,” inspired by Butler’s own life, in which two men find each other before the looming shadow of HIV interrupts their honeymoon. Butler’s cover of Book of Love’s “Boy” pays tribute to New York’s iconic BoyBar, while “Night on the Town” captures two women in the ’60s living proudly. “Pirouette” closes the project in tribute to SOPHIE and Butler’s longtime collaborator Aerea Negrot, who passed within months of one another.

Like last year’s Someone Else Is Calling project, Danseur was created alongside Elín Ey of Hips & Lips and Quinn Whalley of Paranoid London, continuing the chemistry the trio found through their shared love of acid house, disco, and darker music. Across the full two-part EP, Butler is taking listeners on a journey through the sounds of different institutions, carrying forward the emotional current that has run through Hercules & Love Affair since the 2008 classic “Blind,” with ANOHNI. Danseur PT 2 will further expand the project with contributions from Faris Badwan of The Horrors and Albrecht Van Doornik.

Danseur PT 1 Tracklist (OUT NOW)

1. My Journey (ft. Hips & Lips)

2. I Get High (ft. Hips & Lips)

3. The Eyes of Love (ft. Hips & Lips)

4. Boy (ft. Hips & Lips)

Danseur PT 2 Tracklist (OUT SEPTEMBER 10)

1. Pirouette (ft. Faris Badwan)

2. Heaven (ft. Faris Badwan)

3. Night on the Town (ft. Hips & Lips)

4. Flip Flop (ft. Albrecht Van Doornik)

Butler’s music has long held the respect of house music’s foundational figures, with past Hercules & Love Affair work being remixed by legends including Frankie Knuckles and Larry Heard. Butler has spent nearly two decades using Hercules & Love Affair to explore queer identity, intimacy, and the emotional pull of house music.