20 Questions With Soulwax: How the Band’s New Music Is a ‘Reaction to How Formulaic So Much Music Has Become’

“I want to run free when I chose it, play the wrong chord, say something stupid,” Soulwax declares on its latest single “Run Free,” released July 9.

It’s a yearning for a kind of behavioral looseness rarely witnessed and barely tolerated in this meticulously curated modern moment, an era the group thoroughly explores on their forthcoming album, All Systems Are Lying. The title effectively sums up the notions of paranoia and social fracture — and the freedoms that might be their alternative — explored throughout the 14-track project.

All Systems Are Lying — the first studio album in seven years from Soulwax, the longstanding and perpetually cool electronic band lead by Belgian brothers David and Stephen Dewaele — is coming October 17 via Because Music and the band’s own longstanding label, DEWEE. Emanating from an impeccably designed studio in Ghent, Belgium, DEWEE releases music that’s either written, recorded or mixed (or a combination of all three) in the building by the Dewaeles. DEWEE has released music by artists including Charlotte Adigéry and Marie Davidson, with Soulwax earning a 2020 best remixed recording Grammy nomination for their indelible edit of Davidson’s “Work It.”

Between putting their fingerprints on every label release, making their own music and touring as both Soulwax and their lauded dancefloor selector project 2manyDJs, it’s not shocking that the brothers often find themselves in a struggle against time itself. (Along with LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, the pair are also behind Despacio, the beloved roving sound system/pop-up club space that’s been a regular at festivals including Coachella, III Points and Sonar and which will make it’s next U.S. appearance in September at San Francisco’s Portola, where 2manyDJs are also playing.)

But while whizzing across the world on a recent high-speed train ride, Soulwax found time to reflect on the new album, its lead singles (“Run Free” was released in tandem with the album’s spare, glitchy title track) and something Tiësto once told them, in this joint interview.

1. Where are you in the world right now, and what’s the setting like?

We’re on the Eurostar to London.

2. What is the first album or piece of music you bought for yourself, and what was the medium?

Stephen: Axe Attack, a “hard rock” compilation in 1980. Just to give a bit of context, our dad was a DJ on national radio in Belgium, and famously one of the first to introduce rock music back in the late ’60s, and our mom was the one helping him select the records. So even though our house was filled with whatever was happening in 1980 at the time, probably Blondie, Bowie, Talking Heads, etc., I used my savings as a 10-year-old to purchase this particular record, which contained the kind of stuff our dad would not necessarily get and gave me the feeling I had my own thing going on. Motörhead and AC/DC in particular were the artists that spoke to me on this record.

David: I was 8-years-old, it was the 12” for a track called “Rat Rapping” by Roland Rat Superstar. Roland Rat was a British Saturday morning children’s television puppet character, who was brash and loud, and I remember liking the fact that adults seemed to think he was cheeky and funny. The record contains the extended remix, which in 1983 was quite the thing.

3. What did your parents do for a living when you were kids, and what do, or did, they think of what you do for a living now?

Explained this above, and they are currently both into what their sons are up to, perhaps our mom a bit more.

4. What is the first non-gear thing you bought for yourselves when you started making money as artists?

Probably a horrible Bose 5:1 surround sound system. Seemed fancy at the time.

5.  If you had to recommend one album for someone looking to get into electronic music, what album would you give them?

You’d be hard-pressed to find a record these days that isn’t electronic, in that it is made in the same way as dance music. So in a sense everything is “electronic music” nowadays, even the band stuff. If one were to find a luddite who had only heard banjo music to this point in their life for example, we’d probably recommend starting with Kraftwerk’s Man Machine perhaps? But we’d recommend that person to maybe also check out The Beatles.

6. What’s the last song you each listened to?

David: “Dirty Back Road” by The B-52’s.

Stephen: “Sparkles, Crystals, Miracles” by James Holden & Waclaw Zimpel.

7. What’s the philosophy behind All Systems Are Lying, how did it come to be and how does it reflect your current states of mind?

Quite a bit of our time and energy goes into helping other people out with their songs, or producing  or remixing or scoring, and our job then is usually to facilitate someone else’s vision, and we tend to use the part of our brain that is there to solve a problem.

That can be very rewarding and is by no means less creative — but when we set out to make this album, we wanted to work a lot more on a subconscious level and let spontaneity guide us. Towards the end of the process we realized that so many of the lyrics we had come up with had a certain dystopian feel to them, and “all systems are lying” isn’t necessarily both us saying that that is the case, but more a reflection of the time we live in.

There seems to be a general feeling of distrust towards the very systems that are in place in our society to keep it all together, which can easily lead to people not believing in any of them anymore. The greatest human achievements happen when we all believe in the same thing, and right now it seems like almost everyone is questioning something, if not everything.

8. When you say “I want to run free with the music” on the new single “Run Free,” what do you mean?

Similar to the previous answer, it expresses a need to be less cerebral or more intuitive when it comes to music. It’s probably a reaction to how frustratingly rigid and formulaic so much music, and everything that surrounds it, has become.

9. If all systems are lying, how do you know what to believe in? What do you believe in for sure?

That the weather in Belgium will suck.

10. Do you ever feel disillusioned with technology, and if so, how do you balance that feeling with the fact that the use of technology is necessary for you to make music?

A large part of our studio time is being spent trying to push machines that are so old or slightly broken to do what we want them to, and they rarely comply. So you can imagine how frustration with technology is just part of our every day life.

11. What does success for All Systems Are Lying look like to you?

It finally coming out after having finished it in January. Honestly with the amount of music that is being released on a daily basis, just getting people to be aware of its existence seems like a victory these days.

12. Given that you both work on every DEEWEE release, how do you decide which projects to take on and what to devote your precious, and I’m assuming limited, time to?

It’s a constant struggle. The artists on DEEWEE are friends first and foremost, so we find ourselves spinning plates all the time while sometimes having to prioritize other projects, which sucks if they are your friends! On a good day it’s the best, and when we are stressed for time, it can be the worst.

13. How connected do you feel to the American electronic scene, and what parts of America are most exciting/interesting for you to play in?

Not sure if there is a specific “American” scene to be connected to right now as everything is so splintered culturally, but other than the obvious DFA connection, our dear friend Dave P in Philadelphia runs a festival called Making Time, and it’s truly inspiring to see that become successful, because he put his whole heart into it.

14. Is there any wariness of playing the U.S., given the current political situation?

We’re always happy to come and play in the US, as long as we are allowed in.

15. What are the proudest moments of your career thus far?

Losing a Grammy twice.

16. What are you currently finding most challenging?

We’re in a constant race against time. And we’re losing badly.

17. What’s the most exciting thing happening in electronic music, currently?

Anything Quinn Whalley touches, basically.

18. What’s the best business decision you’ve ever made?

Not sure if we’ve ever made a good one.

19. Who’s been your greatest mentor and what’s the best advice they ever gave you?

We once met Tiësto, and he told us we should move our company to the Cayman Islands for tax reasons. We never did, so it kind of answers the previous question as well.

20. What’s one piece of advice you’d give your younger selves?

Put out more music. For everything we end up releasing, we’ve probably thrown away three things that lead up to it. We can’t change the way we are in that respect, but sometimes we stumble on something we buried and realize it’s pretty good.