With dance floor destruction being a regular hobby for these four gents from Ghent, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a frenzied following anchor the Parklife main stage this year, all eager for a lil’ bit of Soulwax satisfaction.
Headed by brothers, David and Stephen Dewaele, aka 2many Dj’s, Soulwax have graced us with such hits as, E Talking, NY Excuse and an endless list of big named remixes including, Justice, LCD Soundsystem and Daft Punk.
Armed with fresh material and a live show that’s sure to wake the dead, Soulwax groove-guru, David Deweale took a little time out from the stage and let us in on what to expect when the boys reach the shores of Oz later this year.
Music Feeds: Dave, how’s a busy life on tour treating you?
Dave: Yeah I’m ok , I’m hungry.
MF: So, where are you currently at right now?
Dave: I’m in London for the Soulwax, Under the Covers Tour.
MF: Who have you guys got supporting you at the moment, any cool up and comers?
Dave: Well right now, cause it’s festival season, we’re not really doing any dates by ourselves. But we’re usually playing at the end of the festival, like on the main stage, so I guess whoever is on before us is the warm up.
MF: Soulwax is headed to Australia for the Parklife tour soon. What can we expect to see, anything similar to the Niteversion’s set you played in 2008?
Dave: It’s hard to say. I think musically its similar to Niteversion’s, but it’s mainly new stuff that we’re trying out now. Because the Under the Covers tour is a lot of 2many Dj’s sort of things, the focus hasn’t really been on Soulwax, so we’ve just been trying new things out here and there, which we’re going to bring to Parklife.
MF: Are there any acts you’re hoping to catch at Parklife if you get the chance?
Dave: Definitely like to catch Busy P. Who’s that artist, umm Tame Impala, are they playing.?
MF: No they’re actually not, are you a fan?
Dave: Yeah definitely, I think they’re amazing. They’ve got such a great sound and they’re so young too. I’d really like to see them.
MF: Any thoughts on where dance music is headed?
Dave: You know, sometimes I feel like a bit of a tourist in the dance music world. I’ll see people go crazy for things that, to me, just sound like a bunch of preset sounds put together. When it comes to that stuff, I’m like an old guy, I don’t really understand how the world works. I just now what I like.
When it comes to dance music it seems like there’s a real explosion of acts all trying to make the same thing, and it becomes very tiring.
MF: You’ve recently teamed up with Crookers and Mixhell for the track, We Love Animals’, which we’ve been hearing a lot.
Any more collaborations planned in the near future?
Dave: You know the only person who we’ve been talking about working together with, and this is in the distant future, is James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem. We don’t really plan collaborations; that thing with the Crookers happened really quickly. They called us four days in advance and said, “Is it ok if we come to Ghent and make a track together”? We said “yeah, come over”, and we spent one day together and that was it. It was very quick, very easily done.
MF: Is there anyone who you would love to work with that you haven’t already?
Dave: I guess it would mainly be older guys because I’m interested in that. There’s a guy called Gerry Rafferty, I really love his voice. So, I’d go with him or maybe Steve Miller. Something like that, someone older.
MF: You must have so many artists begging you to remix them. If you had to choose someone to do their own Niteversion’s take of your album, Any Minute Now, who would you choose?
Dave: The thing with remixes is that, if it would be something for the dance floor, I would probably choose someone like Erol Alkan. But if it would just be for an interesting remix, I think I would have someone like, Yellow Magic Orchestra. They’re really interesting and cool; I would like to see their take on it.
MF: Tell me, do you guys sleep in those white tuxedos?
Dave: Haha! Yeah.
MF: What are you wearing right now?
Dave: A white tuxedo.
MF: Tell us a little about your current live show setup?
Dave: I’m not sure what time we’re playing at Parklife, but we’ve got this whole visuals and light show thing going with everything synced in with the music, which is really cool, so we’ll be bringing that to Parklife.
MF: Any chance of seeing a Radio Soulwax night come to Australia, you’d have a lot of people out here very excited?
Dave: We would love it man, we would really love to do it. We do these things now called Soulwaxmas; they’re in December and we go throughout Europe. We bring a whole line up and it’s basically like a travelling festival. So, to do it in Australia, I think logistically it’s quite hard as it’s a lot of work getting everyone there. It’s hard trying to coordinate everyone’s schedules in such a way because with Australia you can only really go once a year. So, if any of the acts that we were to bring had already played before, lets say Parklife or something similar, they couldn’t really come again. In that respect, Australia is quite difficult to sort a night like that out, but we would love to do it.
