The Strange World Of… Soulwax

Stephen and David Dewaele are a little hazy when it comes to dates. “We always thought the origins of Soulwax were 94 or 95, but I recently found stuff from December 91,” admits David, the younger Dewaele brother by five years. 

You can forgive their imprecision: for three-plus decades the Belgians have worked pretty much exhaustively, releasing an intimidating array of studio albums, compilations, remix records and original soundtracks, under a range of creative aliases including Soulwax, Radio Soulwax, Nite Versions, Klanken and the Krautrock-inspired Die Verboten. And that’s before you count their excellent production work for the likes of Tiga, Marie Davidson, Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul, let alone era-defining live projects like 2manydjs or Despacio – the audiophile-friendly, roving soundsystem they run alongside long-time friend James Murphy.

David has a headache when they dial in over Zoom from DEEWEE, the Ghent-based studio, label and publishing house they call home. Nipping off to grab painkillers, he briefly leaves me with Stephen and a vantage point of their 60,000-strong vinyl collection. “Is it incredible, or is it a sign of hoarding?” Stephen deadpans when I admire the view, before confessing to having a tonne more records in storage.

It’s this borderline-obsessive music geekery that still underpins Soulwax’s creative output. Self-professed rock nerds who truly found their groove working with electronics, their output is at once deferential and exploratory and is – more often than not – created within challenging creative parameters. On the latter score, the first Soulwax album in seven years is a rare exception. Working totally instinctively, the duo eschewed guitars altogether on All Systems Are Lying, creating a record that bounces between paranoid synth-rock (‘Gimme A Reason’), glittering disco (‘Run Free’) and the noodling techno-funk of the title track.

“We’re quite ruthless in the studio,” says David of the creative process. “And I think Steph and I have this shorthand and it can be difficult when you’re working with people who aren’t your brother.” Stephen agrees: “If we make something and one of the two of us goes, nah, we’ll just abort it, because we understand that everything is a conduit into something else.”

Equally, they firmly believe that every single side project and commission has shaped their journey to this point. “The kind of albums that fall in-between straight Soulwax records become these really seminal works for us,” Stephen explains. “Sometimes we need to make something that doesn’t make sense.” With that in mind, here are ten entry points to their sprawling yet endlessly rewarding catalogue.

‘Vista Grande’ from Leave The Story Untold (1995)

Stephen Dewaele: So we’re from Ghent. Ghent is techno. Ghent is R&S Records. Everyone around us is buying a sampler, trying to be Frank de Wulf or to emulate the beginnings of DJ Hell or Aphex Twin. And we love techno but I was always trying to do the opposite of what everyone else was doing. So we started buying really old amps and making music that was so un-Ghent it was almost American. Masters of Reality and Kyuss were such big influences on us that we sent a tape to [producer] Chris Goss, and he was like, “Yeah, come out to LA and we’ll record at Sound City.” 

But while this record is us being a rock band, ‘Vista Grande’ is interesting because that was Chris saying, “How about using a sampler and a beat?” And we were like, “Yeah, we can do that”, because it was subconsciously in our DNA. So I think this is where a lot of what we do now started.

‘Funny’ from Much Against Everyone’s Advice (1998)

David Dewaele: The second album was also done in the US.

SD: Produced by Dave Sardy, who was Rick Rubin’s right hand man, but was also the front man of a band called Barkmarket, who we really loved. [Much Against] is a record where we start embracing sampling and synths. I recognise something [in this song] that we’re still doing now. In fact, I was saying earlier I think we should start playing this live again.

Sardy has been instrumental for our new record as well because Dave and me wrote this record really intuitively. Sardy was the only guy that we sent it to when we were making it, like, “Just tell us if we’re being idiots or not.” He was super helpful. 

‘NY Excuse’ from Any Minute Now (2004)

SD: Me and Nancy [Whang] were seeing each other, so writing the song was literally an excuse for me to be in New York with her. It was James [Murphy] who said we should call it what it is: an excuse. We recorded the vocals then took the track back to our studio and made it a completely different thing. 

DD: For Any Minute Now we spent about two and a half years in the studio, on and off with Flood. I think Chris Goss and Sardy and Flood all tried to tell us what we weren’t really ready to hear: “You don’t need someone else to produce for you – you can do it.” Working with Flood especially was an eye-opening experience, because he had a different view on how to get from A to B. And I think that led the way to what Nite Versions became, which ‘NY Excuse’ could have easily been on, sonically.

SD: I remember we took Flood to see LCD Soundsystem at Fabric and he’d never been there before. He was like (sounding sceptical), “Hmmm, it’s interesting what all you guys are trying to do here…”

‘Krack’ from Nite Versions (2005)

SD: Both ‘NY Excuse’ and ‘Krack’ come from a really heavy riff. They’re rock songs. The more I think about it, the more I think we’re really a weird indie band who can’t be indie. Like, we fail to be indie, so we end up doing it with synths.

We’d also started DJing at the beginning of the 2000s, because we were bored on these NME tours. And then we met Erol [Alkan] and we ended up playing Trash more than anyone else. Suddenly, we had a reason to make things that we could actually DJ. And by the time we’d written ‘NY Excuse’, we’d done that. 

DD: I think with remixing, you need a bit of ruthlessness. Like, someone may think a chorus is amazing, but really it’s that little piece in the verse that we’re going to keep repeating. Maybe we weren’t aware that both of us had that kind of brain back then, but Nite Versions is the record that brought that out of us.

Die Verboten – Live In Eivissa (2009)

DD: That was made in 2006/2007, when we were over for Ibiza Rocks. Part of the deal is they give you their house for the week, so we were like, “We’re already bringing the whole crew over, why don’t we just bring a studio?” And the thing that happens with people who constantly buy records and books and instruments is that we’d amassed this museum of analogue machinery. So for every track, we would go to our instrument shop and then everyone would have their own little station and improvise. In our minds, it wasn’t necessarily krautrock – it was just non-dance music, kind of space-rock. It was freeing because it was void of all the stuff that we thought people felt Soulwax needed to be.

How did you meet Fergus [Purcell, AKA Fergadelic] and Henry [Smithson, AKA Riton] in the first place?

SD: I remember we played Reading and Leeds once, and Fergus was there with Zongamin, and we just hit it off talking about Van Halen and Prince.

DD: Henry came up at the same time as us so we’d see him everywhere, on the same line-ups and festival bills. And at the time, Ferg and Henry were brothers-in-law. 

‘My Tired Eyes’ from FROM DEEWEE (2017)

FROM DEEWEE was recorded in one take – another example of you working within strict parameters. How crucial is that for you creatively?

DD: It’s definitely a good starting point. You can break that rule at a certain point, but when people are confronted with infinite possibilities, it becomes stifling. Giving people parameters is a great motivator. It’s like, where are the borders and where can we push limitations? I mean, we still might be a bit extreme, recording an album in one take or having three drummers.

SD: We actually wanted way more than three [drummers]. The idea comes from doing a lot of gigs as 2manydjs and we would see bands play and there’s not even a drummer. I think we always love this visceral idea of having drums at the forefront, probably because we’re all failed drummers ourselves. And it’s been unbelievable. I don’t think there’s one gig we’ve done where I haven’t looked behind me and been like, “How did we end up having [Igor Cavalera] Sepultura‘s drummer in our band?!”

But what I like about this particular track is that we’ve never been able to replicate it live again, because it really is a product of doing it with the limitations of that session. 

‘Essential Three’ from Essential (2018)

SD: [BBC Radio 1] asked us for an Essential Mix and we were like, wouldn’t it be funny if we make a whole hour of original music and the only lyrics are “essential”. So we sent it to them and they asked us to send over the tracklisting. They had no idea – they were like, “Wait… You made a whole album…?”

Marie Davidson – ‘Work It’ Soulwax Remix (2019)

DD: This is one that went on to live its own life, which is cool. We had a similar thing with the 2manydjs compilation [As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2]. 

SD: Marie is a force of nature. I remember I’d bought a cassette of her other project, SLEAZY, four years before this, so she was already on my radar. And we’d been playing the original version [of ‘Work It’] but it didn’t have the impact that we wanted for our DJ sets. 

DD: This is something that sometimes happens – it happened with the Gossip and a few other tracks. So we made [the remix] super quickly. 

SD: And then we were nominated for a Grammy for it. We were like, “You know what, Marie, this is probably the only time in our lives that we could go to the Grammys together.” So we went.

DD: I remember we were already late for the ceremony when we turned up. As soon as we sat down it was our category and we lost to a Madonna remix. All three of us looked at each other and Steph was like, “Ok, let’s go to a party.” The way Marie tells it, that was the moment she knew that we were going to be family. 

‘Movement 6’ by EMS Synthi 100 from DEEWEE Sessions Vol. 1 (2020)

DEEWEE Sessions Vol. 1 is a love letter to the EMS Synthi 100, the ultra-rare synthesiser beloved of composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen. Only 31 units were ever manufactured, so how did it come into your possession? 

SD: Well this one is actually owned by Ghent University. But we told them if you put it here [at Studio Deewee], we’ll make a record with it. It was a bit like having a Picasso in your house, which was pretty daunting. Also, it’s very hard to work on because it was never made to make harmonies; it was made to make electronically-generated avant garde noise. 

DD: Yeah, it’s not an intuitive machine to work on – it feels scientific rather than super musical. Again, it was basically about limiting ourselves to create within certain parameters.

SD: We loved the idea, like, could we make a whole record with it? We do a live version of ‘Movement 6’ now, replicating the sounds with other things. And it holds up, which is nice.

‘Run Free’ from All Systems Are Lying (2025)

DD: With this particular album, we didn’t really set parameters or limitations because we wanted to see what would come out intuitively. 

SD: I think this record was also a bit of an antidote to us working as producers or mixers or co-writers, trying to help other people distill their ideas. 

DD: So a song like ‘Run Free’, we don’t really know where it came from and that’s the beauty of it for us. 

SD: Can this be the headline? “We don’t really know where it came from.”

All Systems Are Lying by Soulwax is released on 17 October