Soulwax, headed by David and Stephen Dewaele, are an alternative rock/electro band from Ghent, Belgium. The two are perhaps best known for their influential contributions to the bastard pop genre under the names Flying Dewaele Brothers and 2 many DJs and the landmark record As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2. The Dewaele Brothers have also released several major albums under the "Soulwax" moniker, including Leave The Story Untold (1996), Much Against Everyone's Advice (1998), Any Minute Now (2004), Nite Versions (2005) and Most of the Remixes... (2007).

Career

The 2004 album Any Minute Now spawned three singles in "E Talking", "NY Excuse" and the title track. "E Talking"'s music video was controversial and restricted to post-watershed broadcast on music television channels. Set in London's Fabric nightclub, everyone in the video is depicted as being on a different drug, from A-Z (including popular drug nicknames). [1]

The duo has also produced a number of official and unofficial remixes, including "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" and "Get Innocuous!" by LCD Soundsystem, "Robot Rock" by Daft Punk and DARE by Gorillaz. The album Nite Versions (2005) is a collection of remixes of tracks from the album Any Minute Now. David and Stephen are friends of artists Tiga, LCD Soundsystem and Whomadewho.

In summer 2006, Soulwax completed a 'Nite Version remix' of Gossip's "Standing in the Way of Control", as well as their 'Ravelight Dub' and 'Ravelight Vocal Mix' of Robbie Williams' "Lovelight". The summer 2006 tour was filmed by director Saam Farahmand, and resulted in a Radio Soulwax documentary, "Part of the Weekend Never Dies".

In August 2006, Soulwax were working on tracks for the new album from Tiga. In late 2006, it was announced in Belgian magazine HUMO that David and Stephen Dewaele had formed a band with Riton and his brother in-law Fergadelic called Die Verboten.

In 2007, Soulwax produced remixes of "Gravity's Rainbow" by Klaxons, and "Phantom Pt. II" by Justice. Remixes for "Ice Cream" by New Young Pony Club and "Pogo" by Digitalism had been rumoured, but were never completed.

Soulwax, under the guise of 2manyDJs, headlined their own 'Radio Soulwax' tent at the Rock Ness Festival held on 9 June 2007. The following day at Rock Ness Festival, they played a Soulwax Nite Versions show in the 'Clash Arena'. Later that month, they took part in the Wild in the Country event at Knebworth Park on 30 June 2007. In December 2007, they held Radio Soulwax-mas, a massive X-mas party in Flanders Expo with guests such as Tiga, Erol Alkan, Boys Noize, Justice, Riton, Mixhell, Daniele Baldelli, Hong Kong Dong, Das Pop, Goose, Milk Inc, etc.

Soulwax have also produced the debut album by fellow Belgians Das Pop. The album will be released in the UK in 2009.

As Heard on Radio Soulwax

The only official compilation As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2, was released in 2002 and is composed of 45 tracks the Dewaele brothers were able to clear the rights from. They originally requested rights for 187 tracks and got clearances for 114 of them. 62 were refused and 11 remained untraceable.

All the unofficial releases (As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 1 and 3 through 11) are in fact a compilation of the Radio Soulwax shows 2 many djs did for various radios including Studio Brussel (Belgium) , Radio 1 (UK), KISS 100 (UK) and Eins live (Germany).

Other work

The 2001 track "Theme from Discothèque" is by David and Stephen Dewaele from Soulwax, under the name Samantha Fu. They produced this track for a Ghent-based dancegroup called Kung Fu.

Recently Soulwax admitted they'd been putting out material under pseudonyms and secret aliases and music magazine NME decided to attempt to establish what those aliases were. After doing a quick google for anonymous DJs they were put on the hunt to discover the identity of mysterious producer Fake Blood. DJ Erol Alkan, seemingly as a joke, said to his press officer "Tell NME, Fake Blood is Soulwax" which they then repeated and printed it as practically gospel despite that being highly illogical.

On February 2, 2009, Soulwax made a guest appearance on BBC Radio 1, playing 420 song introductions in a period of 60 minutes.

Film

In 2004 Soulwax compiled the soundtrack for the Belgian movie Steve + Sky. Soulwax contributed three instrumental tracks on this compilation under the name "Kawazaki".

Soulwax's remix of the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" is the credit song of, and featured in the movie 21.

Director Saam Farahmand has filmed Soulwax on their international dates (2005-2007), capturing all the excitement, chaos and humour of the world tour. Soulwax filmed 120 shows with one camera in Europe, Japan, US, Latin America and Australia. This resulted in 2 films; a live music film and a documentary which includes 2 many DJs, Soulwax Nite Versions and features James Murphy, Nancy Whang, Erol Alkan, Tiga, Justice, Busy P, The Naked Guy, So-Me, Peaches, Kitsuné, Klaxons and many more in behind the scenes footage, interviews, etc. As of April 2008, Soulwax's clubbing film/documentary Part of the Weekend Never Dies is finished. They performed a sold out gig at the London Royal Festival Hall, during which they did a première of the film. It came out on DVD September 2008.

Albums

• Leave the Story Untold (1996) (produced by Chris Goss)
• Much Against Everyone's Advice (1998)
• As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2 (compilation) (2002)
• Any Minute Now (2004)
• Nite Versions (2005)
• Most of the Remixes (2007)
• The Mash Up Machine (2008)

Singles

Remixes

• dEUS - "Everybody's Weird"
• Einstürzende Neubauten - "Stella Maris"
• Kolk - "Uma"
• Tahiti 80 - "Heartbeat"
• Zita Swoon - "My Bond With You And Your Planet: Disco!"
• Muse - "Muscle Museum"
• Lords of Acid - "I Sit on Acid 2000"
• Sugababes - "Round Round"
• Arthur Argent - "Hold Your Head Up"
• Kylie Minogue - "Can't Get You out of My Head"
• Ladytron - "Seventeen"
• Playgroup - "Make It Happen"
• DJ Shadow - "Six Days"
• Felix Da Housecat - "Rocket Ride"
• LCD Soundsystem - "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House"
• Daft Punk - "Robot Rock"
• Gorillaz - "Dare"
• The Gossip - "Standing in the Way of Control"
• Robbie Williams - "Lovelight"
• Klaxons - "Gravity's Rainbow"
• Justice - "Phantom Pt. II"
• LCD Soundsystem - "Get Innocuous"
• Hot Chip - "Ready for the Floor"
• Human Resource vs 808 State - "Dominator"
• West Phillips - "Sucker For A Pretty Face"
• Rolling Stones - "You Can't Always Get What You Want"
• Walter Murphy & The Big Apple Band - "A Fifth of Beethoven"
• The Chemical Brothers - "Hey Boy Hey Girl"
• MGMT - "Kids"
• Tiga - "Beep, Beep, Beep"
• Dizzie Rascal - "Bonkers"

Official compilations

• As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2 (2002)

Unofficial compilations

These unofficial compilations are bootleg recordings of radio shows that 2 many DJs did for Studio Brussel.

• 12 albums - As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 0 to As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 11
• Hang All DJs (all volumes)

A bootleg recording of their Essential Mix for BBC Radio 1 in 2005 was released under the title "50,000,000 Soulwax Fans Can't Be Wrong".

• Soulwax official website
• Part Of The Weekend Never Dies DVD Review