Waxing lyrical

Not content with being arguably the best band to have ever come out of Belgium, well-heeled weirdniks Soulwax are declaring war on DJ culture from within with a little help from... Rocky Balboa? PlayLouder investigates...

"There's so much emphasis on what clothes a DJ wears, what kind of bags he has, what kind of needles he spins with, where he gets his records from. And it's like somebody playing somebody else's music and it shouldn't be like that. I have a lot more respect for people who write their own songs."

As you'd expect from a man whose band is about to release a single entitled 'Too Many DJs', which opens with the lyrics "Everybody wants to be the DJ/Everybody thinks it's oh so easy', singer Stephen Dewaele isn't too keen on DJ culture. Yet Belgian alt rockers Soulwax aren't actually too far away from the world they criticise. For as well as being responsible for the classic 'Much Against Everyone's Advice' album, a rock-based melange with melodies you'd sell your soul for, and being one of the most kickass live acts around they, or, more specifically, Stephen and guitarist brother David, aren't exactly averse to spinning the odd disc. They've been doing it since they were kids, and at a recent festival in Belgium they played to 15000. So isn't that a bit of a contradiction?

"We're not slagging off DJs. We're merely trying to put some perspective on the whole situation," explains Stephen. "But the song's also about not taking ourselves too seriously." Yet, along with a very deft way with a needle and the trained ear of a vinyl junkie, one thing that strikes you about Soulwax is a complete lack of pretension - they mix records merely out of an obsessive passion for music and an overwhelming sense of fun. Surely not even David Holmes would work Visage and Salt 'n' Pepa into a set, and spin Survivor's Rocky theme 'Eye Of The Tiger'(!) with Skee-lo's 'I Wish' (which is so good, they're being persuaded to put it out on a white label)?

But their mischievousness and good time sensibilities don't stop when they ditch the decks. At gigs, they jump around onstage like frenzied, suit-wearing loons while David regularly indulges in some human beatboxing, swaps his guitars practically every song and plays a wicked (in both senses), cover of Prince's 'Pop Life' on Casio guitar accompanied by a rousing chant of "C-A-S-I-O".

"That's just how we are," claims Stephen. "We don't prepare anything beforehand. We had a really good [gig] in Germany where there were a lot of mic stands behind the stage and we took 20 of them on with us and we were kicking them in a rock and roll pose. It was very funny! What you see is how we feel at the moment. If it's not there, it's not there; we're not going to fake it."

Taken from http://playlouder.com/feature/157soulwax/