For David Dewaele, the younger of the brotherly Belgian duo who form the creative core of Soulwax, 2 Many DJ’s and their various incarnations, music is about following pure impulse, and engaging in the present.
“The boundaries of music are so open now,” says 33-year-old Dewaele on the eve of releasing Part of the Weekend Never Dies – a new documentary that traces the experiences surrounding the group’s 120 show, 2005-07 Radio Soulwax tour. “And because of that, there seems to be less stigma about what happened before. It’s now that counts.
“Like in punk or hip hop, it was about the kids saying, ‘Screw the past, screw the old people – we are young and this is what counts’, and I think that’s really cool.”
Since emerging in the mid-’90s as a comparatively conventional act, Soulwax have gone on to become one of the leading lights in the electronica/indie rock fusion. The brothers’ remixes and heavily referential mash-ups under the 2 Many DJ’s alias, meanwhile, have questioned the very notions of musical authorship.
Soulwax’s 2005 record Nite Versions – which formed the basis for the Radio Soulwax tour – saw them all but merge their two creative guises to completely remix themselves, adapting and reworking a full album of material from their previous 2004 release Any Minute Now.
Nevertheless, Dewaele frames the relationship between Soulwax and 2 Many DJ’s in relatively simple terms. “Soulwax was our band and 2 Many DJ’s was just a chance to play and mix records in a way that we would at home and that we weren’t hearing in clubs,” he says.
“What the 2 Many DJ’s thing has managed to do, is teach us not to think so much, and just feel. That’s what we did with Nite Versions, and what we’ve been doing ever since.”
The sentiment echoes throughout Part of the Weekend Never Dies.
A collaboration between the Dewaele brothers and young director Saam Farahmand, the film pulses with kinetic live footage, schizophrenic montages and reflective interview segments, capturing the Radio Soulwax experience in all its explosive glory.
“I think the way we constructed the film is representative of a DJ set or a whole night of Radio Soulwax,” says Dewaele.
But perhaps they got a little too close to the mark. “We had a screening for our friends. When we’d finished, and it was a physical challenge for me to watch the whole thing,” he laughs. “I had to go and lie down.”
Part of the Weekend Never Dies is released Sept 13 via PIAS/Liberator. Soulwax and 2 Many DJ’s play Parklife September/October.
