actually come to see us, they go wild! Even if it’s two in the afternoon!”
Hell-bent on being vibe-bringers, the band omits the slower, more introspective songs for the live shows. “We get people screaming ‘’Iris’, ‘Iris’, play ‘Iris’!’. We’d play ‘Iris’, but it’s 100bpm and y’all are gonna sit down. But I do want to start creating more down- tempo moments. Björk does an amazing job of getting the crowd going at 135 bpm, and then drops ‘All Is Full Of Love’. Suddenly, everyone mellows out. That pace change works perfectly. We tried it once. I wrote the song ‘Boy Blue’ for Sinead O’Connor, saying to her, ‘I met you at a really hard time in my life as an angst-ridden teenager and you made things so much better for me, I was so grateful that your voice was transported all the way to Colorado’. So when we were in Ireland, we cracked out an acoustic guitar and Sean sung it. It was amazing, but a one-off for now.” And where did he meet Sean and the rest of the Love Affair? “Aerea Negrot I met in Berlin at an Anthony and The Johnsons’ concert. She left the venue because she was crying too much, and the people behind her told her that she needed to be quiet. I was on tour with Anthony and I just happened to be in the hallway and I was like, ‘Are you OK?’ We got talking and when she said she was into opera and techno, I was like, ‘give me your number, now!’ “Sean came up to me after a show to thank me and said, ‘I think you are doing something very important’. Academically, Sean studies things like Vogueing, Ballroom Culture and has a masters in Fashion Curation. He’s a very heady individual. And I said to him, ‘I saw you in the audience tonight and I dedicated the show to you. You look like Sylvester or someone beautiful from that era’. And he said, ‘Well I can sing like Sylvester...’” Although Sean quickly backtracked from this statement, when his demos arrived on Butler’s doorstep, he sat up and listened. “I heard it and I knew that he knew what Cajual Records was, I knew that he knew Chicago house up and down, so the next step was getting him in the studio.”
PAINTED EYES In particular, there is one song on the recent album that gets DJmag dancing down the street like nobody is watching, “‘Painted Eyes’ was commissioned by Chanel. Of course, I was super flattered when they asked me to write a piece of music for them. I didn’t want to write about fashion in its current sense, I wanted to go back to the woman who redefined fashion in the 20th century, and redefined women’s rights: Coco Chanel. I read about her and asked myself, ‘How did she know what the next 100 years was going to look like? How could she see forever?’ She didn’t know what she was doing at the time, but she just got it. Women wear pants because of Coco Chanel, you are liberated because of Coco Chanel, why, even I am liberated because of Coco Chanel!”
Later that night, we watch them perform against the darkening skies atop D’Alt Vita. Sean is vogueing, Aerea belts out operatic arias, Kim Ann dances about the stage, whilst Andy and Mark work the synths. As if an Ibizan crowd needs any more liberation, but as the groove gets under our skins, everyone vogues together. As they launch into their final song, ‘You Belong’, we have an epiphany... Maybe it’s the good energy of the island getting to us, but it dawns upon us that no matter who you are, where you’re from or what you do... we all belong!
048
www.djmag.com
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